Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Between us…

How emotions are “stories in the world.” I ordered a couple of items from Amazon. It’s an option of last resort when I cannot find something going direct to companies. Sometimes Amazon is the only way to order a product. Free shipping is another reason why I might order from Amazon. Since I’m not a Prime member—given the company’s low value practices—I usually wait for my total to pass the minimum threshold. Which this particular order did. However, I realized I wasn’t going to receive one of the items within a reasonable time frame. So I deleted it. Now the... Read more →

Living Closer to your Friends Would Make you Happier. Why don’t you?

Three ideas why. We change. Life changes us. When I moved to America many years ago, I was thinking expansively—it would be great to immerse myself in a new culture. And that it was. I thought I could make new lifelong friends. What I didn’t understand is that beyond growing up together, lifelong friends in America meet in high school and college. After that window of time, your friends vary based upon where you work (occasionally), or live (sometimes), or the professional associations where you’re a member (maybe), or the causes you support (perhaps). The qualifiers are not accidental. Many... Read more →

Stereotypes

The soundtrack that flattens culture to amplify margins—the gain temporary, the collateral effects long-lasting. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s what you get when you try to compress a whole idea into a formula. An attempt to capture a category of things with a simple, generalized belief. You declare: ‘I expect you’re the kind of person/people who does/do that.’ Spam and marketing done on the cheap are all about stereotypes. They speak to the minimum common denominator possible— ‘as long as they’re paying attention.’ Often, the message needs to agree with the client/customers based on their expectations.... Read more →

Overflow

Sensibility and capacity for receptivity are the qualities that allow us to pay attention to, learn from, and act in the world—they are sources of wealth. There are many ways to be as a person. Each of us expresses their appreciation for being alive in different ways. But one of the ways some people express their gratitude is to put something out there for everyone to enjoy. I’m paraphrasing the late Steve Jobs. Some days my eyes fill with so much beauty and love of the craft that it’s hard to contain. There are so many marvelous things to describe... Read more →

Love: the Most Fundamental Market Principle

How duty, learning, and friendship contributed to the foundation of trust. You’ll forgive the Franciscan for owning only one tunic. Clothing was a sign of wealth in Italy’s flourishing economy of the 13th Century. Even expensive vellum manuscripts were frowned upon. Books were alright, but purely as tools for learning. Though it was alright to give gifts to the monastery. There were rules of spiritual utility. But it was the monks who first attempted to put a price on things. The law of diminishing marginal utility was the work of French Franciscan Peter John Olivi. It says that the more... Read more →

A Renewal of Pleasure

Our lives are enriched when we join artists in taking glorious risks. I became a Beatles connoisseur and fan both early and late—early in my life, late in their success. It was the summer I drove with my parents and a couple of their friends to (the former) Yugoslavia. We drove from Modena all the way to the (now Croatian) isle of Krk. We had just left Trieste behind (Trst on the other side of the border) and were driving along the winding road that flanked the coast when we came upon a horrific accident. People were literally bleeding all... Read more →

Whatever it Takes

From the dark side of business and the growing imbalance of power to making a difference with naming and words. Lehman Brothers Inc. was an American global financial services firm and the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States. Its founding dates back to 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, the firm employed 25,000 people. A culture of fear permeated the company. Richard Fuld is the former CEO of the only bank that collapsed in the financial crisis. The bank collapsed because they were taking too high risks. Fuld was known for his super aggressive language: “we’re at war,”... Read more →

Life’s too Short…

to be a copycat of someone else. If machines have personalities, it’s our doing. ChatGPT sure has been in the news lately. I’m not surprised to see it all over social media feeds, given how monolithic those feeds tend to be. “ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that” say the marketers like proud parents of a new toddler to anyone who will look their way. It’s not GPT3’s fault that humans have a well-documented propensity for conning each other. Two years of pandemic isolation behind screens may have exacerbated the issue of bullying in the workplace. Complex PTSD is real. Two intelligent discussions... Read more →

They Called it the “Gentle Revolution.”

For six years I had the privilege of working with a group of therapists and researchers who believed that each child, at the time of birth, has the same potential as Leonardo da Vinci. Their belief was so strong that they started with brain-injured children—children who navigate life as different. The labels varied, but they’re not important. The children are. You see, typically we don’t see framing in our narrative. It’s like defaults. What you do with the cards you’re dealt, that’s what’s important. In a letter to Maria Montessori, her colleague and physician Giuseppe Montesano says, “You need to... Read more →

How you Speak is Who You Are

Identity is forged in the interplay of language and emotion. The connection between the two has value. But we only realize the value of something after we lose it. You may not realize it, but language is the vehicle of our lives. It’s the means through which we communicate our values and orient to the world. Through language, we tend to and access a rich emotional connection with loved ones. That connection with others helps us negotiate our identity. In ancient Greece they knew that it is others who create the context for “me” to emerge and develop. Then we... Read more →