Meeting, Spaces & Shape | Susan George | TEDxYouth@ISF
talk to you today about meaning space and shape it's not this sort of space it's physical space institutional space and conversational space and to do so I shall use some geometrical figures because they are something which we all understand in our liquid global world is Japanese temple you can see a circular window and a rectangular room the circular window helps you to look out at nature and there's a feeling of horizontal piece and space people are happy in this space they're not looking up to anything whereas if you go to the dwarma the cathedral in Venice again you see a rectangle and a circular circular dome but the impression is completely different and for a Japanese person this seems so busy with so many figures on the walls and you feel that there is a relationship to a hierarchy the faithful are going to worship and look at their master that's at the table at the end of the of the room the same differences you can find outside in this square which is not square it's round you can see how the faithful are going to the Vatican think of the difference between that and the impression you get in Siena here the square belongs to the people it's where the Palio takes place you can also find this difference outside in gardens the Boboli garden is a beautiful artistic garden which you go to admire here in Florence whereas hyde park in london is a space which people use and enjoy they play football that they lie they made love it's a completely different space but there are other spaces that are much more hidden and can also be very influential one of these spaces is that of the legal system most of us don't think about it very much but there's an enormous difference between the Natalya legal system and the anglo-saxon won the italian one is based on unilateral power public power is top-down and it's one way the anglo-saxon one the English the Australian the American the New Zealand are plural it's based the state is based on plural institutions and there are different premises behind the way that things are conducted the Italian public administration is based on impartiality and in personality whereas the anglo-saxon one is but seeks to be a guarantor of equity and of mediation between different interests as its plural there are consequences for this agreements in Italy are excluded from the public administration you don't talk to the public administration whereas in in the anglo-saxon system again the actors are plural because they believe that people together can make better decisions the more act as you social actors you have to discuss certain things the better the decision will be one clear consequence of this is the shape of the tables when you have a round table meeting in Italy it's usually a rectangular table nobody talks to anybody else each person presents his position and nobody talks to the person next to them whereas the anglo-saxon ones do a lot of round tables and the consequence of this is that you they actually try to explore new solutions this can change the way citizens feel in relationship the state in Italy people talk about rights and duties delete the Edo very which can be translated in english as rights and duties but it seems strange to us because we are much more used to the concept of rights and responsibilities because we feel that we are part of that state rather than that the state imposing itself upon us now there are other sorts of space that can be hidden and one of these is conversational space and in a public context like a bookshop you would be surprised to find that there are enormous differences in the way Italians and English people buy books the Italian this is from a database of 400 interactions in Bologna and in London the Italian customer usually goes into the shop and says what he needs I'm looking for war and peace and the shop assistant sends him to thee to the section or goes and gets the book if the book is not there though the assistance says it's not in and you have to the customer has to insist if he wants ago not in when will it arrive Oh perhaps next week when so gradually the customer has to insist until he gets the information the English London English British English organization of the interaction is quite different first of all the customer usually goes and looks for the book on his own so he only comes back to talk to the shop assistant if the book is not there and when he comes and says it he doesn't say I'm looking for but he says do you have he starts with the perspective of the of the shop assistant do you have war and peace perhaps it's in comparative literature or perhaps so tries to give an alternative because he does not want to embarrass the shop assistant now an Italian thinks that is absolutely crazy this it's a shop assistants job to sell you the book it's not but the customer is embarrassed English because I was embarrassed if if the book is not there the person is going to be upset and equally the shop assistant is embarrassed to give negative information and signals is fight and well I'm afraid it's not in should be in next week completely different way and in the same turn the shop assistant has given a solution whereas the italian one customer had to insist to get that solution now these can be summed up in two sorts of interaction all circle the Italian enters the space of the other in fact often the Italian overlaps in the conversation whereas the english one is a two separate there are two separate spaces this is my space that is your space and knock on the door rather timidly if I have to come in and ask you something this may be very different in the States but I look at some of us here even in this international context and see that Italians do tend to take space more and we English tenters that are sliding learnt this on my own skin when I was transcribing Neapolitan data so that's not not following yet that's Naples further south and I transcribed all this data I came out after about six hours of transcribing went into my the kitchen and a friend who was staying with me who owed at me a lot was there and I said Oh Steven you must take some papers to the University for me what I must take some papers to us what do you mean must a nice Oh weren't sorry Steve do you think you could possibly take some papers to the University for me oh yes of course no problem so these artists little examples of how we use space differently we perceive space differently and we manage space differently now to conclude I'd like you if you want to play a game you can do it at home you use any of these symbols the circle square triangle and use them 12 times in also it can be 10 circles two triangles or six triangles three circles and three squares you have to use the symbols 12 times in all to draw a person and if you do that and scan it and send it to me I will try and interpret it for you but to conclude we should have a tape which shows you my preference for shape have we got the tape no no tail sorry we're not doing very well with the technology I'm not do very technology this time anyway thank you very much you