Apr 19
2010
The Glass House has a long tradition of hosting intimate conversations. Consider insights, quotes, or questions from a conversation you've had recently.
What makes a great conversation?
Paul gave the final word
I’d like to reframe the question: There is no “what” that can make a great conversation, only “who”. For it is the participants that delimit what is possible in conversation. Circumstances may conspire to make it easier [f2f] or harder [a bad cell connection] but the necessary conditions for great conversation are participants that can begin, engage, and converge on new understandings. If they come to coordinate actions, that’s just “icing on the cake”.
Thursday, April 22 at 6:49pm
In that case, let’s make this a good conversation and start wrestling…
By asking everyone to consider a recent conversation, are we framing “great” to mean “memorable”? There are many wonderful exchanges I’ve laughed, learned and cried over that I can’t remember.
Derek and Katie also bring up the importance of remembering and recalling. Why does a great conversation need to live beyond its moment? Can a great conversation be momentarily epic, beautiful, terrifying, and then forgotten shortly after? What’s special about the conversations we remember?
Long-term memory is subjective to nature and nurture. We store these memories with varied inherence and motivations.
“The key ingredient that facilitates long-term storage is meaningfulness. This term refers not to the inherent interest or worthiness of information, but rather to the degree to which it can be related to information already stored in our long-term memory. One concept or piece of information is more meaningful than another if the learner can make a larger number of connections between that piece of information and other information already in long-term memory.”
-Source
So if great conversations are memorable, does this imply they resonate with more of our other long-term memories? Consider your memorable conversations and reflect on how they connect to other memories.
Wednesday, April 21 at 2:33am
Clint, we recently shared a pretty great conversation going down to the IXD10 in Savannah. Not surprising since we had ten hours and little else to do, but still, that conversation will stick with me for quite a while.
I’m not convinced it will stick simply because it resonated with a significant portion of my long term memories. It was memorable because a significant change occurred in our relationship to one another. We shared ideas and viewpoints that at times converged, at others conflicted. But in conflict we both reached a greater understanding for how our own thinking fits into the world. Our frames of reference changed and our vocabulary of thought grew.
I think great conversations are ones which transform some part of us internally; ones which shift or expand our way of seeing the world.
Wednesday, April 21 at 3:43pm
Gordon Pask claimed that what is preserved through conversation is consciousness, that is, shared awareness of a particular belief. This agrees with what you’re saying, Clint, that the conversation has an effect that endures. Even if you think you can’t remember what was said, if your belief structure changed somehow, it’s forever changed. In this sense, consciousness is preserved in the same way that matter or energy is preserved; and Pask intended his use of the term “conserved” in just this way.
Thursday, April 22 at 6:44pm
Russ, good point. And certainly a memorable conversation is a great one, but I’m questioning the great conversations we don’t remember.
Paul, that’s very interesting. I’ve been thinking about how time plays a role, and how conversations (like matter and energy) exist at a position in time.
Katie sent me this TED talk about experience vs. memory. It explains what I couldn’t. We have an experiencing self and a remembering self. There are great conversations in memory and there are great conversations we experience.
Depending on how the story of the conversation plays out, we store memories of these events in different ways. Thinking about the narrative arc, the conversations with climaxes near the end of the story are the ones we remember most. Endings are extremely important, however you value importance.
So when asked this question, “What makes a great conversation?”, we access the remembering self to formulate our answers. We think of great conversations with a back-end loaded narrative, rather than all the great conversations we experienced. I think that’s why many of our answers are about remembering.
I like Pask’s take, that we share a great experience preserved in time, whether or not it’s preserved in our memory.
Saturday, April 24 at 11:52am
Just as important as the content of the conversation, the larger social context that frames the conversation helps to make it an unforgettable one. Memories of time and place often stay with us, as do the people we shared the conversation with. There have been too many occasions when I started a new conversation with the words, “Remember that time…” – a true testament to the importance of context.
Tuesday, April 20 at 11:23am
I love the parts in between the conversation. Is someone listening, or taking a break from listening? Are they just waiting to speak, and waiting for others to speak? Also, the little visual cues and body language of when someone wants to speak, or is looking for a response from someone. The parts where no one is saying anything can become just as important as when they are talking.
Tuesday, April 20 at 11:35am
We sometimes view the quality of something — a great work of art, for example — by the degree to which it exists “in conversation” with other things… tradition, say, or new developments in a school of thought. Which is to say, we sometimes think of conversation as existing not in a moment between two people, but across time and space and among parties perhaps ignorant of the other’s existence.
These sort of conversations are about relating ideas through a common vocabulary or point of view, but pushing on the edges of definition, making us consider not just the common ground we start from, but the meaningful differences, the expansions, even the rejection of premises. To be in good conversation is maybe a high form of that: sufficiently related to be recognizable as sympathetic to one another, but with valuable insight emerging from the interplay.
Wednesday, April 21 at 12:31pm
The Philip Johnson Glass House is underway with “Modern Views” based on the dialogue between Philip Johnson and Mies that can be explored through the Glass House (Johnson) and the Farnsworth House (Mies). By inviting artists, architects and designers to respond to these sites through the creation of new work, the project hopes to extend one of the great modern conversations of the 20th century into the 21st century. Johnson and Mies will still inspire and participate in this dialogue through their architecture.
Friday, April 23 at 6:30am
Wine ;)
I’ve found that some of the best conversations are ones in which I remind myself of the old adage re: stones & glass houses. When it’s a case of wrestling with someone over an idea, a readiness to admit to brittle or incomplete areas in my reasoning goes a long way in reducing the rockiness of the interchange.
Thursday, April 22 at 8:55am
Paul gave the Final Word
I’d like to reframe the question: There is no “what” that can make a great conversation, only “who”. For it is the participants that delimit what is possible in conversation. Circumstances may conspire to make it easier [f2f] or harder [a bad cell connection] but the necessary conditions for great conversation are participants that can begin, engage, and converge on new understandings. If they come to coordinate actions, that’s just “icing on the cake”.
Thursday, April 22 at 6:49pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Liz Danzico
Chair, MFA Interaction Design
1
Good conversations are the ones where we don’t necessarily agree all the time, but days — or even years — later, they’re the ones we remember. Bigger than us or terribly specific, ideas worth wrestling for stay with us.
Tuesday, April 20 at 9:43am