Imaginary Conversations

You might remember, there was a man, oh a hundred fifty years ago at least, who imagined conversations between thinkers like Socrates and Aristotle. You might describe them as designed conversations because they were really a series of questions and monologuish answers. I forget his name, William Lammington or something like that, was it?
I think you mean Walter Savage Landor.
That’s who it was. How come you remember names while I am er... challenged?
Severely.
Anyway, they had to be imaginary conversations because even though he was writing in the 19th century his thinkers had been dead a couple of thousand years before him.
Do you think the technique worked?
Well, when you are used to today’s media interviews with the famous and almost famous, who use the interview as a means of thinking through their ideas, of stopping and starting, editing their philosophy as they speak, the Imaginary Conversations of Landor seem a bit, well, stilted. The sentences are too perfect, the syntax too correct, the thoughts too clear.
That’s what you get. Isn’t it. Using a media that doesn’t match. Like listening to a speaker at a conference read out his or her densely reasoned arguments in a monotone. They force the audience to grapple auditorily with material better suited to presentation through a visual channel. You mean, when you read something, you can regress, refresh your memory on bits you missed.
Exactly, auditory channels are linear, or at least they are if it is a monologue and you can’t ask questions to clarify. Eyes can jump like hyperlinks.
Mind you, teachers and conference speakers now have PowerPoint to make their arguments visual. And you can go back.
Hmm, but I sometimes think some PP presentations are a bit cut and dried with all those bullets and pie charts.
Not to mention canned graphics.