Agree or disagree with Hawking's quotation - Essay Example

Argument Talking is undoubtedly one of the most essential features of life. Talking is the fundamental means by which ideas get communicated at any level, be that domestic, national, or international. The importance of talking can be estimated from the fact that the pace of technological advancement and growth of knowledge and information became fast only after the evolution of language. Scientific sources suggest that in the beginning of world, people used to communicate with signals. Compared to that, today, so many different kinds of languages and ways of communication have evolved that it is hard to count them.

While the importance of talking throughout the history of mankind in general and in the contemporary age in particular cannot be overemphasized, the author is too optimistic and unrealistic about the results talking can produce. Talking can or cannot be effective depending upon the context, participants, topic, and means of communication. For example, the governments of Pakistan and India have conducted dialogues with each other several times, but have never been able to end their differences, and the rift between the two neighbor countries continues, to some extent, even to date.

Many wars in the history have reached an end as a result of dialogue between the concerned countries. There is yet a long list of world events in which the dialogues among different countries did not produce any meaningful results. Therefore, it cannot be established that no matter what problem is at hand, all that needs to be done is talking for that.If the author’s argument is supposed to be based on reality, then it is obvious that he is not talking about just any kind of talking. It would take a lot of effective talking to reach a point in time when the wildest hopes and thoughts could be materialized into reality.

Effective talking can be defined as the kind of talking that occurs at the right place, in the right environment, at the right time, between the right people, and upon the right subject. But this is an ideal situation which requires a range of events to take place many of which are beyond the control of human beings. Talking is not everything. For example, the first hurdle in the way of developing such a technology is reaching a unanimous decision on its creation because such a technology is likely to harm the world in more ways than benefit it.

If anybody could do whatever he/she wanted, then this world would be a mess. There are fair chances that if, ever, such a matter is discussed, there would be so many opponents that the technology would never be made. Concluding, the author has placed so much emphasis on the power of talking that his expectations from it are unrealistic and very optimistic. While talking can and has done wonders in many situations throughout the history, talking alone is never sufficient to develop a technology that can transform hopes into reality.

So talking is very important but talking is not everything.