Brian Zack, Princeton
To the editor:
What’s with all the public "conversations"?
Every other event featuring a noted or expert speaker now seems to be a conversation instead of a lecture. A conversation is something you have with your spouse over dinner.
In a public forum it just means that the speaker doesn’t have to prepare anything, speaks off the top of his or her head, and as a result transmits far less information far less eloquently. Many of these are just boring.
Event organizers — please have your speakers deliver speeches! That way, maybe the audience will still be awake enough to engage in conversation once they have heard what the speaker actually wants to say.
Brian Zack
Princeton
