Turning up the conversation to 11*

In the old days—that means around 10 years ago—the quality of a hi-fi was largely determined by its size.  The bigger it was the better it was.  I remember getting my Pioneer XF something something 8, bought from the local Hyperama with part time work-money —what a monster. Took up half the lounge and each speaker was almost a meter in height. The guys at school looked at me with a whole new respect and for the first time I knew what it felt like to be the ‘man’ just because I had more debt than anyone else.

Man, this thing had dials and buttons like those on the flight deck of a Boeing 737-800. On the odd occasion I would turn the volume dial up (forget a remote control) to around 6 or 7 just to feel the vibration in my stomach. Crank it up to 8 and the ornaments on the top of each speaker would start to move to the beat and by the time you got to 9 the windows were starting to vibrate.  At a 10 the family budgie couldn’t stay on its perch and the family cat and dog had all but disappeared—along with Granny.  How was I to know that just coz you were deaf didn’t mean you couldn’t feel the beat?  Boy was there trouble when the folks got home.

But what if that 10 could be turned to an 11?  Surely 11 would be better than 10?  That sort of thinking can get you into real trouble … Ever feel in a world as noisy as ours you would like to turn up the conversation to an 11?  Break through all that clutter and make sure your voice is heard above everyone else’s?  The problem is that when you crank it up to 11 everyone else does the same.  But what if it wasn’t just about loudness?  What if loudness was determined by the quality of the sound not the position on the dial?  What if the quality of your conversation was the real reason your volume level was an 11? 

Read a great quote the other day about blogging:  never in the history of humankind has so much been said by so many to so few … thank you for being one of the few…….

(* My thanks to Brian Penrose of the University of the Witwatersrand, Dept. of Philosophy who first introduced me to the idea of having a conversation, turned up to 11.)