(BBC) Forum for Thought: The Bearable Lightness of Being Silent

The BBC Worldservice has been running a programme on Sunday mornings called "The Forum", where intellectuals from all disciplines gather together to allow themselves to be queried on topics as vast as globalisation, global business, mathematical formulations of an African village, etc. You get the picture: wide array of issues.

Yesterday, an intervention by one Professor Trevor Cox (who works on sound engineering) featured on the one-minute-idea-to-save-the-world segment talked about the need to sometimes just - keep -quiet and switch our phones, mobiles, computers off . It had less to do with energy and more to do with getting back to a time and period when we could think without being interrupted by a text message and whatnot.

His major contention is that for business to work effectively, the quiet is very much needed.

I believe someone by the name of Carlyle said in a moment of epiphanous truth that "silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves."

The irony of this post is that I am writing it -- motivated by the desire to blog -- in a mall, where silence is virtually impossible (Celine Dion is blasting from the eatery, while muzak plays in the halls of the mall), but downright counter-productive to the business of selling all sorts of stuff!

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