Use ← → to navigate  ·  F for fullscreen

Communication as
Rogue Unknowing

Craig Smith

Educator · TEDx Speaker · Author

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure.”

Often attributed to Mark Twain

Today’s path

  • 01 Map your own atlas
  • 02 Build bridges between ideas
  • 03 Practise multiple perspectives
  • 04 Care for the listener
  • 05 Balance clarity and difficulty
  • 06 Prepare without becoming rigid
  • 07 Find your own form

“This is my way. What is yours?”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Activity 1 · Atlas of the Self

Create a map of your interests.

Music Books / articles / ideas Media Politics / social issues Art / culture Technologies Conversations Places People Things you avoid Things you are curious about

Pair share

Choose one part of your atlas.

Explain it to another person in a way that helps them care about it.

// Key idea

Your atlas determines
the bridges you can build.

Activity 2 · The Bridge

Good communicators often create insight by connecting things that do not seem to belong together.

One idea
An unrelated idea

Build a meaningful bridge between two unrelated ideas.

Build a bridge — choose one pair

OctopusesDemocracy
CompostForgiveness
OrigamiSpace travel
JazzThe immune system
LighthousesLoneliness
TidesAttention
SaltMemory
EarthquakesRumours
  1. What connects them?
  2. Why does the connection matter?
  3. How could it help someone understand something differently?

// Key idea

Insight is often a connection someone else has not made yet.

TEDx talk Watch the talk

AI is not simple

AI touches:

Creativity Education Work Equity Environment Water Data centres Disability & inclusion Academic integrity Economics Power
Activity 3 · Perspectives you do not hold

Write down three perspectives on AI that you do not personally hold, but can understand.

  • AI will democratise creativity
  • AI will flatten culture
  • AI will support accessibility
  • AI will widen inequality
  • AI will reduce cognitive effort
  • AI will create new forms of expression

// Key idea

Good communication starts with noticing,
not speaking.

Communication is an act of care

Care sounds like:

  • Are they with me?
  • Am I going too fast?
  • Did that term land?
  • Have I assumed background knowledge?
  • Am I giving enough structure?
  • Am I respecting their intelligence?

// Accessibility is not simplification

Make ideas easier to enter without making them smaller.

What happens when care disappears?

Demonstration: a complex concept — too quickly, with jargon, no pauses, no framing.

Who did I lose?

Then again:

Slower With context With one example With a check for understanding

// Key idea

The best communicators are not the ones who say the most. They are the ones who notice the most.

Clarity is not enough

If communication is only simple, safe, and predictable, it can become stale.

Good communication also needs:

Challenge Risk Difficulty Surprise Unresolved tension

Melody and dissonance

// Melody
  • Clarity
  • Repetition
  • Structure
  • Familiarity
// Dissonance
  • Difficulty
  • Strangeness
  • Tension
  • New possibility

// Productive difficulty

If your audience understands everything immediately, you may not have taken them anywhere.

Activity 4 · Clarity / Challenge Flip

Choose one idea.

// Version 1

Explain it as clearly and accessibly as possible.

// Version 2

Explain it again, but add one productive difficulty:

  • A metaphor
  • A strange connection
  • A philosophical question
  • A challenging implication
Activity for later · Poetry
  1. Choose a poem that is not immediately simple — one that does not give itself away on first reading
  2. Learn it by heart
  3. Recite it to somebody
  4. As you speak, think about how you are communicating the poem’s hidden intention — not just its words
// Starting points, if you need one
  • Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Emily Dickinson
  • The Windhover — Gerard Manley Hopkins
  • anyone lived in a pretty how town — e. e. cummings
  • The Snow Man — Wallace Stevens

Preparing without reducing energy

I do not want to memorise scripts.
I want to learn how to move through ideas.

My process

  1. Think in motion
  2. Talk ideas through with AI
  3. Write rough sentences
  4. Say them aloud from memory
  5. Listen for rhythm
  6. Record the living version
  7. Transcribe it
  8. Replace the written version
  9. Build anchor points, not a full script

// Key idea

I was not trying to remember what I wrote. I was trying to remember what I meant.

Activity 5 · Speak it alive
  1. Write one idea in 2–3 sentences
  2. Put the writing away
  3. Say the idea aloud from memory
  4. Notice how it changes
  5. Rewrite the spoken version

I distrust perfect systems

Frameworks can help.

But no framework can perfectly hold a living idea.

// Form

The best talks teach the audience how to hear them.

Learning how to wobble

If you are not willing to risk being a bad communicator sometimes, you may never become a good one.

What are they expecting from you?

Not perfect. Not generic. Not slick.

They are looking for someone real, thoughtful, and worth listening to.

In an age of AI

AI can generate something that sounds right.

But it cannot generate something that is you.

Final reflection

A good communicator asks:

  • What do I care about?
  • What perspectives can I hold?
  • How can I help this audience understand?
  • Where can I take a useful risk?
  • What is true to my way of seeing?

This is my way.
What is yours?

wrenasmir.com artistic works theuniversalsandpit.org education works
1 / 34
Rogue Unknowing