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by neilk
5212 days ago
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pg, I may be alone in this, but I think your talks, even when read out verbatim, have an extra dimension that is missing in your essays. When you speak, your curiosity and sense of humor come through strongly. You like to use writing to explore radical new ideas, and to this end, you refine your essays to have as few qualifications as possible. On the page it sometimes comes off as arrogant. But with your voice, I can hear you proposing these ideas for the sheer delight of a new perspective... the tone says "what if we thought about it this way?" Also, I'd like to slightly disagree that when one is in an audience, one's critical thinking goes down. It's a matter of knowing how to focus your attention. When I watch someone speak, I'm looking for the unintentional parts as much as the intentional. Where does the person smile and feel relaxed? Where do they seem stressed? What's their body language saying? For a geek metaphor, think of that part in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash where he describes how certain people have the ability to "condense fact from the vapor of nuance". This gives a whole other channel of information to engage your analytical mind, so watching a speech can become like reading. |
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Paul is right that being a good speaker is not about making your ideas better, but I don't think being a good writer is much different (perhaps the bar is lower since it's not live, and there are less judgements to be made of the person themselves), to be a good writer or a good speaker you need to be able to keep people interested and convey ideas clearly.