Communicating also means Listening: [Article]

I quite often forget that listening is as important as speaking in communication. Dave Winer had a very pertinent post about this a couple of days ago:

I tend to do a lot of talking myself, I’m aware of it, so I try to reign it in. Tell my mind to listen and not talk. That’s hard for some reason, but it’s important. Otherwise why bother spending time with others? I can hear myself talk any time. This is a different person across the table. Someone I don’t see every day. What’s their experience? What can I learn from them? I want to know. And if I can’t get my mind to quiet down, none of that happens.

The price of hypocrisy [Article]

This article, by Evgeny Morozov, about the hypocrisy of information consumerism that has enveloped the world, was published recently in the German magazine faz.net. Worth a read.

Even the best laws will not lead to a safer internet. We need a sharper picture of the information apocalypse that awaits us in a world where personal data is traded to avert the catastrophy.

The first CEO blog post [Article]

A very good piece of advice. For any communication, for that matter.

Be brave, say what you really think, say it in your own words. And I mean your own words – the way you would talk to a friend. Not falsely informal nor nervously official. Your real voice, the real you. Surprisingly this is what makes it so damn hard

Treating people as things [article]

Nicholas Carr worries that we’re beginning to see conversational pleasantries as unnecessary, even annoying. In a recent blog article, Conversation points, Carr points out that

allowing the mechanism of communication to determine the terms of communication could also be seen as a manifestation of what Adorno termed “an ideology for treating people as things.”

The whistled language of Oaxaco, Mexico [Documentary]

Whistled language is a rare form of communication that can be mostly found in locations with isolating features such as scattered settlements or mountainous terrain.  Watch this documentary of Dr. Mark Sicoli conducting field studies among speakers of this language who live in northern Oaxaco in Mexico.