While on a long run yesterday along the Thames (yes we have one here too) I got thinking about the Cluetrain and that core thesis.
Yes, and… “Humanity is conversation”.
Conversation is a human thing. We can’t help but have it, with others, and with ourselves. Whether we have it or not it keeps happening all around us.
If flows like water, sometimes fast sometimes slow. Sometimes it eddies and looks like there’s no place to go. It can’t be stopped, for long, and it can’t be forced, for long. It just flows, whether we’re part of it or not.
Conversation is what ‘separates’ us from other living organisms. At least, our own technology of conversation does. It started with language, and after the awkward evolution of mass media, has blossomed with the adoption of the web.
But really, if we look a little deeper we can see conversation is what life is all about. Our bodies are bundles of conversation among physical processes. Our environment is an extraordinarily rich and dynamic web of conversations. Everything is conversation.
And so, in a way, I am really a set of conversations, a participant in many more, and an observer of ‘others’. But really, it’s all just conversation flowing.
Sometimes it’s nice to sit on the shore and watch it go. Sometimes it’s nice to get naked and dive in. Whatever I do, and however it happens, it’s nice to know it’s all a part of this great conversation we we call humanity.
