Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About

Chapter 13. Relevant Sensory Oddity (RSO)

We have shut down our senses. Because so much of our urban and suburban infrastructure has been designed for optimum functionality in the automobile age, let’s face it—it’s not very nice to look at, especially in North America. Sitting in our cars and rolling past strip malls, highway exit signs, and off-ramps, we’ve learned to tune out much of our environment. The fact that a great many individuals spend much of their working lives in spaces where function has erased the beauty of form has contributed to an overall numbing of the senses.

In our quest for cleanliness and order, we have reduced the variety of odors in our environments. By piping in music to the point of over-saturation, we have also encouraged ...