Evicting Phaedrus
I'm generating ideas for my next speech, which is "organize your speech." One in particular seems to have the highest gravity: "You really aren't listening to me."
In at fairly low level, this isn't that difficult or dangerous. It's simply making, then explaining, a comparison of how we as humans encoding, transmit and decode words to communicate desired action with how we the same task with people. My goal is simple: to demonstrate the tactics we choose when coding might be used to the organize speeches. My thesis is also simple: you aren't really listening to me because you not going to decode what I am because of how I encoded and transmitted it. However, there are three techniques that apply
- Don't abstract, decompose
- Encode at the most atomic level
- Pick the simplest encoding possible
I have no doubt that these methods work.
But is this potentially poisonous. I'll be stuck with two paradoxes going forward. The first is that this an indirect assault on the purpose of ToastMasters. These are methods for become better communicators, but not better speakers. A good speaker, at least as far as I'm concerned, relies on the abstraction that this method tells you to abandon. Truly great speakers don't just communicate facts, they share visions. That's impossible if my thesis is correct, but we know it happens, so my thesis must be wrong. But we know my that thesis is right in the physical world.
I'm also saying that object-oriented programming -- which I firmly believe is -- in an ineffective way to communicate with the computer. The same reasons that I can truly express myself to the computer are the same reasons I cannot truly express myself to another person. We can communicate facts, we cannot truly share vision.
I see the ghost of the protagonist character Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance silently telling me not to do this, but the only way I can evict my personal Phaedrus is to do exactly that.