I saw The King's Speech last night and was bowled over by it - it's a film about King George the VI overcoming a stammer to deliver a memorable speech which took Britain in to World War Two.
It's a great story - king needs help and finds it from an unlikely place - an eccentric speech therapist - and just in time to deliver the speech that inspired the nation.
But why was making a speech such a big deal? Obviously he was king and a war was about to break out, but it is the significance of the medium - the radio - as the most immediate and most widely (geographically) broadcast medium that mattered. The king had to put into spoken word what the country as a whole was feeling and thinking and he had to galvanise the country into action. The nation was gathered around radios to hear what he had to say.
I enjoyed being reminded of the power of the spoken word, something I tend to forget when tweeting or reading blogs.
Thinking about it, I consume far more written words than I do video or audio content. Maybe that will change . . .