Design Practice

I couldn't help overhearing.

Looking at the act of listening into someone else's conversation and why it is good.

Firstly, a common misconception. Overhearing and eavesdropping are not the same. Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening into the private conversation of others without consent. However, if a message is publicly broadcast, witnessing it does not count as eavesdropping, this is overhearing.

So why is overhearing good?

for several reasons...

So from a social aspect, overhearing allows the circulation of behavior of others and through this, humanizes them by being able to compare and contrast information against others to help define social statuses, so an example would be someone talking about another person but not talking about another, the listener is impartial and from this can learn where to place this person with an informed decision.

Another aspect of social advantages of overhearing would be finding out secret information of other, which has its obvious advantages.

To help with the social side of this I also completed a short and simple qualitative questionnaire. Results from this were conclusive. People do overhear conversations and are likely to divulge information to other.

Overhearing also benefit through an increase in knowledge, and information can come as factional or fictional, it is a choice of course as to whether you believe the information that you hear. You may also find that information that you hear supports your arguments or information that you already have. Through overhearing you can also obtain information about what a majority of people think based on their opinions.

Overhearing is free, and also unlike gifts it is also free to give, but you can put a price on the information that you hold.

It doesn't require looking. Even if you're on your own you can still reminisce some of the juicy overhearings you made earlier.

It can be humorous. From dry the dark humour, most tastes are catered for and you can create even more by bringing overhearings in and out of context to double the laughs. This act also supports/encourages your creative thinking.

It is of course part of human nature, and it is good to be human. Studies show that the average human can hear typical chatter 20 metres away and blind people possess even stonger hearing abilities than sighted people, various studies have shown however someone born blind will have better hearing abilities than someone who became blind later in life.

Overhearing also fuels peoples need to gossip and gossiping can be dated as far back as the egyptian hieroglyphs. Gossiping however is also more prominant today than ever, which cannot be bad? Heat magazine alone on average sells over half a million copies each week.

So, start listening.