Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

[psychoanaleesis]

In his TED Talk, Niall Ferguson talks about how the "Western" Civilizations created the wealth of the centuries despite being disadvantaged either geographically or demographically. This is amazing because he didn't even have to mention Ayn Rand here and yet the same conclusion appears time and again: Rights (protected) protected by Law invented by Reason. He further stated that the West operate(d) on the edge of chaos - which I take to be possible only through the use of... bada-bing... Reason or the Scientific Method!

or click this link (I can't seem to figure out how you guys embed media)

Edited September 20, 2011 by David Lee

[Selene]

David:

Very wise analysis.

I think the analysis of mainland China is quite incorrect. They are in the process of imploding through a series of conflicting forces, One of the large provinces is defaulting on its obligations which is handled in a moral, as well as physical, manner in Chinese culture.

However, the macro analysis is correct.

Adam

[psychoanaleesis]

I liked what he said about the open source nature of the "killer apps" or maybe he should start calling it "life apps" since those are the things that maximizes - if not allows - man's life. Didn't Rand also say something about the proportion of reason and force in a country? That to the extent there was freedom, laws and rights, wealth was created while to the extent that there was government intervention: suffering and chaos reigned. -was it from the Voice of Reason?

In any case, China seems to have found a loophole in the process because the government is not directly coercing businesses anymore. I think they are entering a sort of industrial revolution that also happened in the West through sweatshops and such. Plus, there's the media held by their necks and there's also the 50 Cent Party to help this cause of keeping "The People" tame and misinformed.

China never changed their policies in fact but simply made a longer leash for the great people there e.g. inventors, businessmen to roam around but eventually, it leads back to force only now they've got the gold of the world to back it up.

[BaalChatzaf]

See this vid again and again and again. Ferguson has stated the matter without polemic, without forming a cult. He has stated it clearly and factually.

Ba'al Chafatz

[Selene]

I liked what he said about the open source nature of the "killer apps" or maybe he should start calling it "life apps" since those are the things that maximizes - if not allows - man's life. Didn't Rand also say something about the proportion of reason and force in a country? That to the extent there was freedom, laws and rights, wealth was created while to the extent that there was government intervention: suffering and chaos reigned. -was it from the Voice of Reason?

In any case, China seems to have found a loophole in the process because the government is not directly coercing businesses anymore. I think they are entering a sort of industrial revolution that also happened in the West through sweatshops and such. Plus, there's the media held by their necks and there's also the 50 Cent Party to help this cause of keeping "The People" tame and misinformed.

China never changed their policies in fact but simply made a longer leash for the great people there e.g. inventors, businessmen to roam around but eventually, it leads back to force only now they've got the gold of the world to back it up.

David:

Ayn made numerous references to that standard.

I will have to see if I can come up with the exact reference.

Here, she touches on parallel concepts:

The moral principle is: If we are to live and prosper, we must always act on our

rational

judgment—our basic means of living.

36

And this brings us to the question: What can

stop

us from acting on our judgment?

Looking at reality, Rand observed that the only thing that can stop a person from acting on his judgment is other people; and the only way they can stop him is by means of

physical force

.

37

To see this vividly, suppose you are alone on an island. What can stop you from acting on your judgment? Nothing can. If you decide that you should go fishing or pick some berries or build a shelter, you are free to do so. But suppose another person rows up to the island, hops off his boat, and ties you to a tree. Clearly, you are no longer free to act on your judgment. If you had planned to go fishing, you can’t go. If you had planned to build a shelter, you can’t build it. Whatever your plans were, they are now ruined, and, if you are not freed from bondage, you will soon die.

The brute’s force has come between your thinking and your acting, between your planning and your doing. You can no longer act on your judgment; you can no longer act as your life requires; you can no longer live as a human being. Of course, the brute could feed you and keep you breathing; but a “life” of bondage is not a human life.

A human life is a life guided by the judgment of one’s mind.

In order to live as a human being, a person must be able to act on his own judgment; the only thing that can stop him from doing so is other people; and the only way they can stop him is by means of physical force.

This principle holds regardless of location, regardless of the kind of force used (a gun to the head, fraud, the threat of incarceration, etc.), regardless of who uses the force (an individual, a group, or a government), and regardless of the extent to which force is used.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2011-fall/ayn-rand-theory-rights.asp

Thank you so much for the reference to the "50 Cent Party," hell here in the US, 50 cent is a rapper! Moreover, it is fascinating to me that O'biwan, the incredible boy fascist prince's campaign organization has the exact same operation dedicated to controlling the information flow on the internet.

During the 2008 election campaign, David Plouffe:

Plouffe was the campaign manager for Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign. He is credited with the campaign's successful overall strategy in the race (primarily against Senator Hillary Clinton) for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, to focus on the first caucus in Iowa and on maximizing the number of pledged delegates, as opposed to focusing on states with primaries and the overall popular vote. He is also credited by The New Republic for Obama's success in the Iowa caucus and for crafting an overall strategy to prolong the primary past Super Tuesday. The Chicago Tribune writes, "Plouffe was the mastermind behind a winning strategy that looked well past Super Tuesday's contests on Feb. 5 and placed value on large and small states."^[7] Plouffe also maintained discipline over communications in the campaign, including controlling leaks and releasing information about the campaign on its terms. Averse to publicity himself, Plouffe's control over the internal workings of the Obama campaign successfully avoided the publicly aired squabbles that frequently trouble other campaigns.^[7]

and

David Axelrod, the little Hitler like power in the campaign who:

Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from

Howard Dean

's

2004 presidential campaign

as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama. Axelrod explained to

Rolling Stone

, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in.

According to Axelrod getting volunteers involved became the legacy of the campaign "

[26]

This includes drawing on "

Web 2.0

" technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy. Obama's web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.

[27]

The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.

Excellent post David.

Adam

Edited September 20, 2011 by Selene

[psychoanaleesis]

Adam:

Has it not been proposed (here in OL or somewhere else in the interwebs) that Obama was actually a manchurian candidate and now incumbent? If you really want to lord over others, don't bank on the wealthy and wise, those people have limits and standards. Instead, let the hoi polloi lift you up and over and they'll also have you use their backs to sit on as your throne. And boy, is the internet the place to be when it comes to the masses. In fact, the tactics you mentioned were the same that the Philippine President also used in his campaign. If I remember correctly, Obama-rama even reached these shores during election period there.

Yes, Adam, I know who's 50 Cent... I actually happen to like his rap songs too

Baal:

Avoidance of polemics is effective and refreshing. Add that dry euro wit and accent, it's becomes captivating as well.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

David,

I just saw this video.

Wow!

I get the feeling that the smarter folks on the left (which is TED's main audience) are looking for a way to sneak capitalism into their views without calling it that.

On this point, I generally see the left and right and Objectivist/libertarian folks in intersecting Venn diagram circles, with the area of intersection gradually growing over time. The area in common is where they like their modern benefits, toys and good times, but they don't want constant wars as the price. Their respective colleagues in each of the circles seem to not mind the wars so much and they seek to profit from them. And I really do mean leftists, rightists and Objectivists/libertarians alike.

I wonder if this "non-war" area of intersection on my imaginary Venn diagram could form a new circle one day that is just as powerful and influential as the others. I see Neil Ferguson's lecture as a step in that direction.

I long for the day we can get rid of bully-worship in our Objectivist/libertarian subculture. At least, I see the number of independent-thinking peaceful folks growing. And not just in our subculture, but on the left and right, too. I'm cool with any of those folks.

Michael

[psychoanaleesis]

Michael,

I didn't know TED was partial to certain views. I thought it was like the Ford Hall Forum where Rand spoke -- or something... In any case, I see your point. Mr. Ferguson did not identify or endorse Capitalism per se (did not name it).

Politically speaking, yes, I could strive to live with fellows who take a different metaphysical or epistemological view albeit can we expect them to be honest with others - mostly with themselves and identify their stance when asked? I wonder if they have something to show and offer goods instead of the mystical tricks and mind warping lies they spread as you say. *Sigh*

Here's hoping in the spirit of Nietzsche.

[BaalChatzaf]

Baal:

Avoidance of polemics is effective and refreshing. Add that dry euro wit and accent, it's becomes captivating as well.

And Ferguson does a great Sean Connery impression as well.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Philip Coates]

Could someone list the 'six killer apps' the thread title is talking about?

[merjet]

See the video 8:40 in.

[Philip Coates]

Merlin, a *written* thread is about -words- and ideas- in *writing*: if you want to discuss six items you have to name them. Not tell people to view a talk.

Or are we going back to the oral tradition of people gathered around a campfire?

What part of this is fucking unclear???

[merjet]

The list is written at 8:40. Why are you so damn lazy?

[Philip Coates]

I apologize for the irritated tone of my last post. The point, however, is that if you are going to discuss a, b, c on a thread and comment about what a good set of points they are or their defects or the brilliance of their originator, you need to somewhere list them - put them in the thread.

Not just for my benefit, but for the benefit of general discussion.

It's not an issue of (my) laziness, Merlin. If I got and look it up it still only benefits -me- but not the general discussion. And what if the video is removed or the link destroyed and someone looks at the thread and tries to understand it at some point in the future.

It's an issue of objectivity.

Here's an example that ought to make it clear: Someone tells you he disagrees with Rand's six principles of metaethics or the four fundamental axioms that underlie Euclidean geometry. When a discussion ensues and he is asked to name them, he refuses and says "don't be lazy...go look it up".

Who is the one being lazy (and non-objective)?

[psychoanaleesis]

Here you go Phil.

"One, competition.

Two, the scientific revolution.

Three, property rights.

Four, modern medicine.

Five, the consumer society.

And six, the work ethic.

You can play a game and try and think of one I've missed at,or try and boil it down to just four, but you'll lose." - N. Ferguson

--Looking at it now, maybe the fifth should be a "producer society", if most people are "consumers" in truest sense of the word, then the list Niall proposed could break down and will become, in fact, "Killer" apps. What say you guys?

Full Transcript:

Let's talk about billions. Let's talk about past and future billions. We know that about 106 billion people have ever lived. And we know that most of them are dead. And we also know that most of them live or lived in Asia. And we also know that most of them were or are very poor -- did not live for very long. Let's talk about billions. Let's talk aboutthe 195,000 billion dollars of wealth in the world today. We know that most of that wealth was made after the year 1800. And we know that most of it is currently owned by people we might call Westerners: Europeans, North Americans, Australasians. 19 percent of the world's population today, Westerners own two-thirds of its wealth.

Economic historians call this "The Great Divergence." And this slide here is the best simplification of the Great Divergence story I can offer you. It's basically two ratios of per capita GDP,per capita gross domestic product, so average income. One, the red line, is the ratio of British to Indian per capita income. And the blue line is the ratio of American to Chinese. And this chart goes back to 1500. And you can see here that there's an exponential Great Divergence. They start off pretty close together. In fact, in 1500, the average Chinese was richer than the average North American. When you get to the 1970s, which is where this chart ends, the average Briton is more than 10 times richer than the average Indian. And that's allowing for differences in the cost of living.It's based on purchasing power parity. The average American is nearly 20 times richer than the average Chinese by the 1970s.

So why? This wasn't just an economic story. If you take the 10 countries that went on to become the Western empires, in 1500 they were really quite tiny -- five percent of the world's land surface, 16 percent of its population, maybe 20 percent of its income. By 1913, these 10 countries, plus the United States, controlled vast global empires -- 58 percent of the world's territory, about the same percentage of its population, and a really huge, nearly three-quarters share of global economic output. And notice, most of that went to the motherland, to the imperial metropoles, not to their colonial possessions.

Now you can't just blame this on imperialism --though many people have tried to do so -- for two reasons. One, empire was the least original thingthat the West did after 1500. Everybody did empire.They beat preexisting Oriental empires like the Mughals and the Ottomans. So it really doesn't look like empire is a great explanation for the Great Divergence. In any case, as you may remember,the Great Divergence reaches its zenith in the 1970s, some considerable time after decolonization. This is not a new question.

Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer,opposed it through his character Rasselas in his novel "Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia," published in 1759. "By what means are the Europeans thus powerful; or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither?"

That's a great question. And you know what, it was also being asked at roughly the same time by the Resterners -- by the people in the rest of the world -- like Ibrahim Muteferrika, an Ottoman official, the man who introduced printing, very belatedly, to the Ottoman Empire -- who said in a book published in 1731, "Why do Christian nations which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nationsbegin to dominate so many lands in modern timesand even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?" Unlike Rasselas, Muteferrika had an answer to that question, which was correct. He said it was "because they have laws and rulesinvented by reason." It's not geography.

You may think we can explain the Great Divergencein terms of geography. We know that's wrong,because we conducted two great natural experiments in the 20th century to see if geography mattered more than institutions. We took all the Germans, we divided them roughly in two, and we gave the ones in the East communism, and you see the result. Within an incredibly short period of time, people living in the German Democratic Republic produced Trabants, the Trabbi, one of the world's worst ever cars, while people in the West produced the Mercedes Benz. If you still don't believe me, we conducted the experiment also in the Korean Peninsula. And we decided we'd take Koreans in roughly the same geographical placewith, notice, the same basic traditional culture, and we divided them in two, and we gave the Northerners communism. And the result is an even bigger divergence in a very short space of timethan happened in Germany. Not a big divergence in terms of uniform design for border guards admittedly, but in almost every other respect, it's a huge divergence. Which leads me to think that neither geography nor national character, popular explanations for this kind of thing, are really significant.

It's the ideas. It's the institutions. This must be truebecause a Scottsman said it. And I think I'm the only Scottsman here at the Edinburgh TED. So let me just explain to you that the smartest man ever was a Scottsman. He was Adam Smith -- not Billy Connolly, not Sean Connery -- though he is very smart indeed. (Laughter) Smith -- and I want you to go and bow down before his statue in the Royal Mile; it's a wonderful statue -- Smith, in the "Wealth of Nations" published in 1776 -- that's the most important thing that happened that year ...(Laughter) You bet. There was a little local difficulty in some of our minor colonies, but ...

(Laughter)

"China seems to have been long stationary, and probably long ago acquired that full compliment of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. But this compliment may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of." That is so right and so cool. And he said it such a long time ago.

But you know, this is a TED audience, and if I keep talking about institutions, you're going to turn off. So I'm going to translate this into language that you can understand. Let's call them the killer apps. I want to explain to you that there were six killer appsthat set the West apart from the rest. And they're kind of like the apps on your phone, in the sense that they look quite simple. They're just icons; you click on them. But behind the icon, there's complex code. It's the same with institutions. There are sixwhich I think explain the Great Divergence. One, competition. Two, the scientific revolution. Three, property rights. Four, modern medicine. Five, the consumer society. And six, the work ethic. You can play a game and try and think of one I've missed at,or try and boil it down to just four, but you'll lose.

(Laughter)

Let me very briefly tell you what I mean by this,synthesizing the work of many economic historiansin the process. Competition means, not only were there a hundred different political units in Europe in 1500, but within each of these units, there was competition between corporations as well as sovereigns. The ancestor of the modern corporation, the City of London Corporation, existed in the 12th century. Nothing like this existed in China, where there was one monolithic statecovering a fifth of humanity, and anyone with any ambition had to pass one standardized examination, which took three days and was very difficult and involved memorizing vast numbers of characters and very complex Confucian essay writing.

The scientific revolution was different from the science that had been achieved in the Oriental world in a number of crucial ways, the most important being that, through the experimental method, it gave men control over nature in a way that had not been possible before. Example: Benjamin Robins's extraordinary application of Newtonian physics to ballistics. Once you do that,your artillery becomes accurate. Think of what that means. That really was a killer application.(Laughter) Meanwhile, there's no scientific revolution anywhere else. The Ottoman Empire's not that far from Europe, but there's no scientific revolution there. In fact, they demolish Taqi al-Din's observatory, because it's considered blasphemous to inquire into the mind of God.

Property rights: It's not the democracy, folks; it's having the rule of law based on private property rights. That's what makes the difference between North America and South America. You could turn up in North America having signed a deed of indenture saying, "I'll work for nothing for five years.You just have to feed me." But at the end of it, you've got a hundred acres of land. That's the land grant on the bottom half of the slide. That's not possible in Latin America where land is held ontoby a tiny elite descended from the conquistadors.And you can see here the huge divergence that happens in property ownership between North and South. Most people in rural North America owned some land by 1900. Hardly anyone in South America did. That's another killer app.

Modern medicine in the late 19th century began to make major breakthroughs against the infectious diseases that killed a lot of people. And this was another killer app -- the very opposite of a killer,because it doubled, and then more than doubled, human life expectancy. It even did that in the European empires. Even in places like Senegal,beginning in the early 20th century, there were major breakthroughs in public health, and life expectancy began to rise. It doesn't rise any fasterafter these countries become independent. The empires weren't all bad.

The consumer society is what you need for the Industrial Revolution to have a point. You need people to want to wear tons of clothes. You've all bought an article of clothing in the last month; I guarantee it. That's the consumer society, and it propels economic growth more than even technological change itself. Japan was the first non-Western society to embrace it. The alternative,which was proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, was to institutionalize and make poverty permanent. Very few Indians today wish that India had gone downMahatma Gandhi's road.

Finally, the work ethic. Max Weber thought that was peculiarly Protestant. He was wrong. Any culture can get the work ethic if the institutions are there to create the incentive to work. We know this because today the work ethic is no longer a Protestant, Western phenomenon. In fact, the West has lost its work ethic. Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German -- a thousand. And this is part of a really extraordinary phenomenon, and that is the end of the Great Divergence.

Who's got the work ethic now? Take a look at mathematical attainment by 15 year-olds. At the top of the international league table according to the latest PISA study, is the Shanghai district of China.The gap between Shanghai and the United Kingdom and the United States is as big as the gap between the U.K. and the U.S. and Albania and Tunisia. You probably assume that because the iPhone was designed in California but assembled in China that the West still leads in terms of technological innovation. You're wrong. In terms of patents, there's no question that the East is ahead.Not only has Japan been ahead for some time,South Korea has gone into third place, and China is just about to overtake Germany. Why? Because the killer apps can be downloaded. It's open source. Any society can adopt these institutions,and when they do, they achieve what the West achieved after 1500 -- only faster.

This is the Great Reconvergence, and it's the biggest story of your lifetime. Because it's on your watch that this is happening. It's our generationthat is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it's just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.

So I want to end with three questions for the future billions, just ahead of 2016, when the United States will lose its place as number one economy to China. The first is, can you delete these apps,and are we in the process of doing so in the Western world? The second question is, does the sequencing of the download matter? And could Africa get that sequencing wrong? One obvious implication of modern economic history is that it's quite hard to transition to democracy before you've established secure private property rights.Warning: that may not work. And third, can China do without killer app number three? That's the one that John Locke systematized when he said that freedom was rooted in private property rights and the protection of law. That's the basis for the Western model of representative government. Now this picture shows the demolition of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's studio in Shanghai earlier this year. He's now free again, having been detained, as you know, for some time. But I don't think his studio has been rebuilt.

Winston Churchill once defined civilization in a lecture he gave in the fateful year of 1938. And I think these words really nail it: "It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs,the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is civilization -- and in its soil grow continuallyfreedom, comfort and culture," what all TEDsters care about most. "When civilization reigns in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people." That's so true.

I don't think the decline of Western civilization is inevitable, because I don't think history operates in this kind of life-cycle model, beautifully illustrated by Thomas Cole's "Course of Empire" paintings.That's not the way history works. That's not the way the West rose, and I don't think it's the way the West will fall. The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos. That's one of the most profound insights to come out of the historical study of complex institutions like civilizations. No, we may hang on,despite the huge burdens of debt that we've accumulated, despite the evidence that we've lost our work ethic and other parts of our historical mojo. But one thing is for sure, the Great Divergence is over, folks.

Thanks very much.

(Applause)

Bruno Giussani: Niall, I am just curious about your take on the other region of the world that's booming, which is Latin America. What's your view on that?

Niall Ferguson: Well I really am not just talkingabout the rise of the East; I'm talking about the rise of the Rest, and that includes South America. I once asked one of my colleagues at Harvard, "Hey, is South America part of the West?" He was an expert in Latin American history. He said, "I don't know; I'll have to think about that." That tells you something really important. I think if you look at what is happening in Brazil in particular, but also Chile, which was in many ways the one that led the way in transforming the institutions of economic life, there's a very bright future indeed. So my story really is as much about that convergence in the Americas as it's a convergence story in Eurasia.

BG: And there is this impression that North America and Europe are not really paying attentionto these trends. Mostly they're worried about each other. The Americans think that the European model is going to crumble tomorrow. The Europeans think that the American parties are going to explode tomorrow. And that's all we seem to be caring about recently.

NF: I think the fiscal crisis that we see in the developed World right now -- both sides of the Atlantic -- is essentially the same thing taking different forms in terms of political culture. And its a crisis that has its structural facet -- it's partly to do with demographics. But it's also, of course, to do with the massive crisis that followed excessive leverage, excessive borrowing in the private sector.That crisis, which has been the focus of so much attention, including by me, [url="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/niall_ferguson_the_6_kill

Edited October 4, 2011 by David Lee

[merjet]

It's an issue of objectivity.

No, it was what you wanted somebody else to do for you.

[psychoanaleesis]

I completely agree Merlin because if it was an issue of objectivity, watching the vid would be as good as reading the print. I hope Ole Phil would read the whole transcript instead *snickers* He could have watched the vid, it would have been faster than the whole back and forth you two did. So Phil, wherever you are, as a favor to me too, I hope your response to NF's presentation would be insightful, critical and enlightening mmmkay?

[Philip Coates]

Thanks, David, the short list is very helpful.

> if it was an issue of objectivity, watching the vid would be as good as reading the print.

No. Objective communication means giving the subject what it and the specific situation and the nature of the subject requires - clarity in philosophical or intellectual discussion at a high level requires written form not the 'oral tradition'.

That's why Peikoff's great lectures should long ago have been available as transcripts. That's why things like the TED videos are a nice first step, but for serious points you need to PTIFW

*Put

**Them

****In

******Fucking

********WRITING !!!!!!!!!

[Brant Gaede]

Thanks, David, the short list is very helpful.

> if it was an issue of objectivity, watching the vid would be as good as reading the print.

No. Objective communication means giving the subject what it and the specific situation and the nature of the subject requires - clarity in philosophical or intellectual discussion at a high level requires written form not the 'oral tradition'.

That's why Peikoff's great lectures should long ago have been available as transcripts. That's why things like the TED videos are a nice first step, but for serious points you need to PTIFW

*Put

**Them

****In

******Fucking

********WRITING !!!!!!!!!

Thanks, David, the short list is very helpful.

> if it was an issue of objectivity, watching the vid would be as good as reading the print.

No. Objective communication means giving the subject what it and the specific situation and the nature of the subject requires - clarity in philosophical or intellectual discussion at a high level requires written form not the 'oral tradition'.

That's why Peikoff's great lectures should long ago have been available as transcripts. That's why things like the TED videos are a nice first step, but for serious points you need to PTIFW

*Put

**Them

****In

******Fucking

********WRITING !!!!!!!!!

Could it be that he has and had a different agenda than thee? Your premise is he's an educator. My premise is he's a leader of a cult. In any case, if those lectures don't top OPAR--and why should they?--they ain't great. OPAR was where, after all, he PT(OBJECTIIVISM)IFW!

--Brant

[psychoanaleesis]

Nah, the difference of the 'oral tradition' back then Phil is that they couldn't record it back then. Now, I do agree with the clarity bit because reading it allows the emotional overtone simmer down. One could 'hear' the arguments made with subvocalization (voices in one's head) and come up with a well-informed response.

Oh, luckily TED puts their videos into transcripts like the one I posted above.

[9thdoctor]

And now Phil's back to derailing other people's threads.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a pertinent quote from Improving Your Storytelling by Doug Lipman (pp. 21-22).

Look at the written language in this book. What elements does it use to convey meaning? First, it uses the letters that form words. Second, it uses punctuation. Third, it uses various typographical devices, such as typefaces, font sizes, italics, indentations, etc. Fourth, it uses picture--graphical elements such as diagrams. Fifth, it communicates through the materials of the book itself: the size, thickness, color, and other qualities of the paper and the binding.

All the magic of writing is conveyed with those five kinds of elements. All the passion, logic, impetuousness, inevitability, and humor of written language is shaped, like sculpture, from the simple clay of words, punctuation, typography, pictures, and materials.

What about oral language? The only element it has in common with written language is words.

But oral language has many additional elements, such as tone of voice, gestures, posture, facial expression, eye behaviors, and several other forms of expression.

My schooling focused exclusively on written language. Inadvertently, it left me feeling that only written language was "real" language. It ignored the rich complexities of the language I had used even before I entered kindergarten. My schooling not only neglected oral language; it encourage me to overlook it is something potentially worthy of attention and capable of improvement.

Written language is, of course, invaluable. Nothing I have learned about oral language takes away from the value of the written word.

But since becoming a storyteller, I have also discovered the workings of oral language. I have learned that the elements of oral language allow different kinds of expression--and place different demands on me--than those of written language. Knowing the nature of oral language is, for a storyteller, like knowing the exact nature of paint for a portrait artist. To be sure, our knowledge of oral language is mostly unconscious, but our print orientation can make us ignore what we actually know how to do.

Oral language offers many elements that can communicate a given meaning. Also, it can simultaneously communicate more than one meaning. And time passes during an oral story in a strict way that is foreign to the reading experience. I call these qualities the variety of expression, the multidimensionality, and the time-based nature of oral language. These qualities underlie the unique expressiveness available to the storyteller.

The Variety of Expression

Oral language uses only one element of written language: words. All too often, oral language is unconsciously taken to consist of words and little else. This causes us to neglect the expressive possibilities of its varied elements, which form the building blocks of how stories are told.

The key expressive tools of oral language include tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, posture, eye behaviors, and orientation in space.

Not to mention the possibility of Powerpoint slides, displays, and other prompts--and audience participation--when the presentation is a nonfiction lecture.

I remembered the Lipman source off the top of my head, so it was easy to look up and transcribe. btw - It's a great book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

But I also remember reading in several places a breakdown of how the mind absorbs information and makes it sticky. The written word all by itself is the least sticky. The most sticky is when all the senses are engaged and emotion is prompted, but you can leave out smell and taste most of the time without affecting the stickiness (unless the topic is food or something that uses them).

This has been studied and verified in many double-blind experiments. If I get the time to search, or suddenly remember a source like I did this one, I will present it.

Michael