There is no texting on my family phone service. Not only do I want to avoid paying for it, I also want to encourage my children to talk with people, instead of talking at them, as so many of their friends prefer to do. The new methods of communication we use free us up from the annoyance of having to look at, pay attention to, or listen to other people. Sherry Turkle at the New York Times has also noticed this.
Many young people see the lack of face-to-face conversation as a benefit to the new communication, but as they mature they may realize that as they dispense with listening, their network connections ("friends") are not listening to them, either. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)
A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn’t stop by to talk; he doesn’t call. He says that he doesn’t want to interrupt them. He says they’re “too busy on their e-mail.” But then he pauses and corrects himself. “I’m not telling the truth. I’m the one who doesn’t want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I’d rather just do things on my BlackBerry.”
A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”
In today’s workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the job wearing earphones. Walking through a college library or the campus of a high-tech start-up, one sees the same thing: we are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens. A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes a scene in his office. Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.” With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken.
In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right.
Many young people see the lack of face-to-face conversation as a benefit to the new communication, but as they mature they may realize that as they dispense with listening, their network connections ("friends") are not listening to them, either. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)
Plenty of people talk AT me even though they are conversing with me, face-to-face.
I'm not much of a texter, but I use it for communications that benefit from a different sort of rhetoric (and when the person is not in the same room as I).
Faust continued, "I worry about dumbing down in terms of speed and in terms of reflection. Do we sit back and think about things hard or do we always have to go on to the next sound bite, the next stimulus?"
But that's just my individual preference. I think that, in general, the expansion of communication has been tremendously beneficial. We can choose our own communities across the entire world. We aren't limited by geographic distance and thus have so many more choices that any previous generation.
Personally I love that everyone is being absorbed into their own little bubble worlds. Less chance they'll try to chat with me.
I really found it incredibly rude that no one talked to anyone else at the table. They just texted.
Anyone who is interested in the gross effect of our alienation from each other should read Erich Fromm's Man For Himself.
I am not a technology hater. But I'm definitely not part of the "We" in the article; people who constantly text & use the internet 24/7. I do spend too much time at my computer and I do sometimes listen to music when walking someplace. But when I'm around a friend, I want them, not the constantly available internet and the obviously less important app on a device. I've always valued being listened to. Really listened to. Maybe youngsters don't know what that is? I want to be interested in someone and get that in return, not the pathetic illusion that people "care" because they "like" you online. Long email "conversations" I'm okay with; it's an extension of people exchanging letters with distant loved ones. And IM can be like a conversation, sure. But when a person is there, in person, and wants to say something, you should pause what you are doing and listen. Is that not obvious any longer?
Recently when I was around friends who in the past were good conversationalists, I sadly found them to be glued to their devices and not really there and available to talk and listen. Face to face conversation is not something humans can afford to evolve out of.
So not a balanced article, sure. She's lamenting about something that bothers her, and she has legitimate reasons, even if nostalgia for the good ol' days is coloring her observations. How to make it better? Not sure. Make more throat clearing in the presence of zombies praying with their thumbs to the god(s) of Facebook & twitter...
Maybe the younger generation is different or something (certainly her inquiries are far broader than mine), but Turkle's account just feels thoroughly one-sided. We do need to work at figuring out the right way to engage these technologies, and some people are definitely getting it wrong. However, these technologies are here to stay, and they can also be more powerful and expressive than Turkle is willing to give them credit for.