{"id":1178,"date":"2019-01-21T15:23:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T15:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2019-01-21T15:23:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T15:23:49","slug":"conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/21\/conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>About my interruptive\/interactive quote\/comment compulsion: Yes, it is treating a written text as a real-time conversation (in which you don\u2019t normally hear the end till you reach the end).<\/p>\n

Some (many) mea-culpas: Even in real oral conversations, I tend to interrupt before the person gets to finish, sometimes because I have already anticipated the finish or think I have (I\u2019m of course sometimes\/often wrong) and sometimes because I\u2019m just impatient to reply (often because I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ll forget otherwise).<\/p>\n

In my defence, on my own end, I don\u2019t much speechify; I say my bit with minimal words, so as not to subject the other party to the kind of frustration I feel when someone is being long-winded. (I stop reading novels as well as monographs, too, when it\u2019s obvious (or so I think) where they\u2019re going, and it\u2019s just words).<\/p>\n

I think my interruptingness is also related in some way to my indiscretion, my saying things I shouldn\u2019t say, divulging secrets, partly even a Trumpian hyperbole, stating things that I conjecture or wish were so as if they were fact. There is a definite impulsive\/compulsive component to these ejaculations.<\/p>\n

And of course the failure of open access and skywriting, which was specifically motivated by my belief that everyone was inclined and inspired to real-time interactivity, as I was \u2014 but instead turned out to be an olympic event at which I perhaps excelled but for which no one but me had any interest or appetite!<\/p>\n

I tell it (or perhaps rationalize it) all here:<\/p>\n

Harnad, S. (2003\/2004) Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought<\/a>. Interdisciplines. <\/p>\n

(It\u2019s against my nature, having said all this, to refer anyone to chapter-and-verse instead of just restating it simply and compactly on the spot, so I\u2019ll say it: I thought the human brain (and thinking itself) evolved language for real-time, \u201conline” exchanges at the speed of thought, not for the long, offline monologues that later supplemented it across time, space, and generations, in the form of writing and print.)<\/p>\n

But it was just a fantasy, based on a compulsive quirk of mine.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nuff said. Since then I have learned what I knew (as we all know) already, but had ducked for 50 years: It\u2019s not about me<\/a><\/i> (unlike this bit of self-indulgent self-flagellation).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About my interruptive\/interactive quote\/comment compulsion: Yes, it is treating a written text as a real-time conversation (in which you don\u2019t normally hear the end till you reach the end). Some (many) mea-culpas: Even in real oral conversations, I tend to interrupt before the person gets to finish, sometimes because I have already anticipated the finish … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Conversation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1179,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}