Story Booth
Photo: Local Projects for Story Corps
One extraordinarily neglected yet absolutely vital skill for success in the modern world is the ability to speak: to tell a story. That story may be a position, or it may be an explanation or it may be a dramatic narrative, but it will require speaking in a compelling fashion with care and preparation in advance. Learning to tell a story is why a story booth is so important. It's a way not just to practice speaking skills alone, but also as a way to work privately with a mentor or teacher without embarrassment or fear. Rhetoric was once a required subject, and we need to bring it back: the Story Booth is one important tool. It will allow you to record your efforts, play it back for critique, archive it if useful, transmit it if desirable, and allow for remote communication with distant lands since the infrastructure is already there. The latter notion was explored recently in New York City, where residents were invited to connect with people in a similarly connected Story Booth in Europe and share whatever came to mind. The possibility of sharing your experience, but also of challanging preconceptions of the "Other", that distant and strange person perhaps actually no different from us, is a compelling one.
