Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Interpreting Truth

“And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true philosophy.” [Plato] We all see reality through the prism of our individual make up and identity, as well as the customs and beliefs of our society. Culture drives how we come to... Read more →

We Pay Attention to Stories with Emotional Appeal

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] Dr. Paul D. MacLean was a physician and neuroscientist who made significant contributions in the fields of physiology, psychiatry, and brain research through his work at Yale Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health. The author of a controversial evolutionary theory, the “triune brain,” he proposed that the human brain was in reality three brains in one—the reptilian complex in charge of fight-or-flight type decision-making, the emotions-controlling limbic system, and the neocortex, which drives higher thinking skills. Post-2000,... Read more →

10 Minutes is All we Have

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” [Susan Sontag] The more attention we pay to something, the longer we retain that information in our brain. How much detail we are able to recall depends on the influence of a select few things. This is important, we want our message to come through and we'd like people to remember it, especially when they're selecting a product, service, or organization. But before we get to that, how long are we able to pay attention to something before our mind starts wondering? Ten minutes is a... Read more →

Susan Cain's Reading List for People who Draw Energy from Discussing Ideas

In the reader's guide section for Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking Susan Cain summarizes the thesis of the book. She says: At least one third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled “quiet,” it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society—from Van Gogh's sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer. The book... Read more →

The Value of Knowing Who we Are

Terry Gross (host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air) moved from Brooklyn where she grew up and was lucky to find radio in Buffalo after college. She quickly became very passionate about radio. Which was fortunate because she had also discovered in college that she was a much better reader than she was a writer—that she could not have passed muster given her standards as a reader. Both discoveries led to a brilliant career in radio. It was just two short years from her start in Buffalo to making the transition to a big market. At the time, WHYY was... Read more →

Ten Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy

In 1985, advertising man David Ogilvy predicted 13 changes we will see in the ad business. A man who enjoyed his work, Ogilvy was fond of list making. Three years before making those predictions, he sent an internal memo to all employees titled How to Write. The memo is part of a collection of Unpublished David Ogilvy that includes memos, letters and notes the ad man wrote over the years and spells out his core beliefs on writing in pity form. It says: The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write... Read more →

The Roles Imagination and Creativity Have in Our Lives

“The real key is being able to imagine a new world. Once I imagine something new, then answering how to get from here to there involves steps of creativity. So I can be creative in solving today’s problems, but if I can’t imagine something new, than I’m stuck in the current situation.” [John Seely Brown] As Chief Scientist at Xerox Corp. and director of its Palo Alo Research Lab John Seely Brown spent some time thinking about and working on innovation. He's now independent co-chairman of Deloitte Center for the Edge and a visiting scholar at USC. A self-appointed Chief... Read more →

Conversation is the Work

“Underlying many of the problems of humanity is our inability to even talk about our problems.” [Paavo Pylkkänen] Physicist David Bohm had the capacity to abstract what he learned from his work into the larger arena of meaningful living. His way of being in the world doesn't allow a person to avoid participating or being changed by that participation. To read Bohm is to learn to think and talk again, and we need practice to do both. Anyone looking to improve their effectiveness in conversation would do well to pick up the short book On Dialogue, which collects the physicist's... Read more →