Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

"Me, Inc." and Autonomy

“You are a brand.” From this simple thesis Tom Peters put forth in a book: Brand Called You, came an article in Fast Company magazine. The personal brand movement started in earnest. It was 1997. I revisited the concept at the The Blog Herald more than ten years on. Especially for those of us who worked in communications for organizations it was an intriguing thought. They were the times of still substantial budgets, good agency fees and media empires. Agencies were building brands through sheer push: design for recognition, make a big enough media purchase, and talk it up in... Read more →

Reclaiming Personal Power

“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything — that's part of how you teach people they can't do anything, they're helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.” Noam Chomsky said no qualifications are necessary to observe what's going on. In fact, anyone has the intellectual capacity... Read more →

Experimenting with the Questions

The restoration of value begins with fixing the language. And continues with adjusting expectations. When you tell a new story, you can begin to weave into an alternative narrative. This in turn allows you to tap into a new set of beliefs. And the path that seemed unimaginable before opens up. Childhood, for example, is an idea born in the Renaissance. Before then, as soon as human beings could talk and understood direction they became full members of society. On average at 7 years of age. First came the word, than the idea. Once childhood took root, it became impossible... Read more →

How Language Informs Narrative and Influences Culture

“All subject are a form of discourse,” says Neil Postman. It makes sense. Because you need language and conversation to discuss biology, physics, chemistry, history, geography, astronomy, etc. Dialectic is valuable, whether you're arguing to win, or have a loftier goal: that to understand. Cicero first said that the purpose of education is to 'free the student from the tyranny of the present.' If you look up the root of the word, educāre (to express a principle of directing or guiding) is associated with educĕre, interpreted as ‘revealing’ or ‘exposing’ to the outside (ex being the prefix that says out,... Read more →

Technology's Impact on Narrative and Culture

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents will pull information for us on the basis of parameters we establish and control. They will deliver it to the social networks that exist inside our own data network. Web 3.0 is the true era of conversation, where the real dialogue begins.” I wrote those words here in 2007. Was I wrong! And late to the game; the hype started in 2004. Facebook was just at the beginning of what would become a long string of betrayals al the altar of the algorithm. Web 2.0 became disappointing quickly, offering the same 'exchange value' model in new... Read more →

Our Conflicted Relationship with Narrative

History the way it's taught is boring. Hard as hell to keep track of all those names and dated without context. My love was for the narrative that surrounded great works of literature. You could say I learned history through novels. There's so much you can learn when you put the two together. Narrative and culture relate in more than one way. How words relate to other words as our language evolves. The relationship between symbols and signs, things and words. These are just two examples. Knowledge is just a stage in human development, said Neil Postman. Because ideas travel... Read more →

The Art of Crap-Detection

Neil Postman delivered his speech, “Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection” at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, in Washington, D.C. [This below is the full transcript with no additions or comments on my part. After having read Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology and other books by Postman and listened to surviving interviews, I wanted to have a reference to point to for his thinking.] With a title like this, I think I ought to dispense with the rhetorical amenities and come straight to the point. For those of you who do... Read more →

How do You Get to "Good Enough"?

It took Clare Trapasso nine months of scouring the market in three states, touring dozens of homes, losing multiple bidding wars, and rescinding another offer on a fixer-upper that would need more work than they could afford to put in, before she and her partner finally closed on a cute, renovated Cape Cod outside of New York City last year. Along the way, Trepasso, who is a writer for Realtor.com, learned a few things that no amount of writing about the housing market could teach. If you're on the hunt for a house, her article could be valuable to shortcut... Read more →

What's the People Version of "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover" and "You Pay More for Higher Quality"?

Elizabeth Books is a bookshop in Western Australia. The self-proclaimed home of the blind date with a book. Blind tasting for books is the opposite of using differentiation in look to stand out. With the added benefit that you could discover an amazing writer you would have never considered otherwise. What happens if you take away differentiation in look? The idea of judging a book from its cover falls apart. See what peaks your curiosity from a short summary instead. You might pick up a topic or subject that could surprise and delight you. This is also marketing, only counter-cultural... Read more →

What's the Value of Cultural Range?

Some cultures are (up)tight, and some are l o o s e. Ten years ago, in a quest to explain human behavior's variance, psychologist Michele Gelfand studied 33 nations. As she explains in the abstract: Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). Culture is... Read more →