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Is it true, nothing or kind?

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This has been bugging me, as I am consciously excitable and enthusiastic about whatever it is I am doing so will voice my thoughts in search of the truth, hoping that what I';m saying isn't vacuous and as it is academic then there should be no question of whether it is 'kind' or not.

You pass a stranger walking the dog. You mention the weather, or football and you are immediately guilty of opening your mouth for no worthwhile purpose. Better to say, 'What a lovely dog you've got!' which is kind, more than nothing ... though whether it is true or not is open to debate (or undebateable). 

You might say more than 'lovely weather we're having' and say 'that high has established itself and looks like giving us a long spell of settled sunshine' TRUE ... but you may be talking to a BBC weather presenter.

Say nothing at all?

Just smile kindly and let the person you pass on the path fill in the detail.

Pernickety about many things my late father considered all small talk a waste of breath; how are you, the weather, football ... though you could stop him in his self-indulgent thoughts by mentioning a kite you'd spotted. Each to their own.

'Lovely weather we're having' someone says to which you reply, 'and amazing cloud formations, have you noticed ... look, what does that one'.

Where does flirting fit into the pattern?

You whisper sweet nothings into her ear as you grin, cuddle closer and reciprocally place hands in places that hint of something more.

Is it kind?

That depend. If it is first date can you tell yet whether it will lead to fifty years of marriage, three kids, six grandkids and a mortgage?

Is it true?

'I love you' ?

Where's the truth in that? Your truth may be their ability to indulge you.

 

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 19 June 2014, 07:40)
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Design Museum

Communismization of knowledge

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 22 Mar 2013, 06:54

The penny just dropped ... what's all this fretting about process for? Have we all forgotten the purpose of research???? Not to get the process right, but to get answers to problems, to find better ways, to understand and share what is going on so that we can act, or not act on it?

I'm doing the H817open MOOC so my head is spilling out in various directions trying to define what 'open' is all about. It isn't even the democratisation of education and knowledge either, it is the Tim Berners-Lee rather than the Google approach to knowledge - give it away for free, it is 'communismization' - which is a word, however horrible it sounds, I just looked it up.

This moves me onto dwelling on Creative Commons.

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Writing is an act of converting tacit knowledge into articulable knowledge 

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 10:03

'Externalisation is a process of articulating tacit knowledge into explicit concepts. It is a quintessential knowledge- creation process in that tacit knowledge becomes explicit, taking the shapes of metaphors, analogies, concepts, hypotheses, or models. When we attempt to conceptualise an image, we express its essence mostly in language - writing is an act of converting tacit knowledge into articulable knowledge'. (Emig, 1983).

REFERENCE

Emig, J (1983) The Web of Meaning. Upper Montclair. N.J.

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