Technologies of Mobile Connection Through Texting and E-Mail
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Technologies of Mobile Connection Through Texting and E-Mail
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The New York Times
April 21, 2012
The Flight from Conversation
By SHERRY TURKLE
We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for
mere connection. At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives’ text during board
meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about
an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it
can be done.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and
circumstances about their plugged-in lives. I’ve learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful
that they change not only what we do, but also who we are. We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone
together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want
to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is
control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own
party.
Our colleagues want to go to that board meeting but pay attention only to what interests them. To some this seems like
a good idea, but we can end up hiding from one another, even as we are constantly connected to one another. 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.”
Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with
technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which
we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference. We are
tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-
mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation. Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of
information or for saying, “I am thinking about you.” Or even for saying, “I love you.” But connecting in sips doesn’t work
as well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another.
In conversation we can attend to tone and nuance. In conversation, we are called upon to see things from another’s
point of view. Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital
devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the
most important matters.
And we use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves. During the years I have spent researching
people and their relationships with technology, I have often heard the sentiment “No one is listening to me.” I believe this
feeling helps explain why it is so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed — each provides so many
automatic listeners. And it helps explain why — against all reason — so many of us are willing to talk to machines that seem to care about us. Researchers around the world are busy inventing sociable robots, designed to be companions to
the elderly, to children, to all of us. One of the most haunting experiences during my research came when I brought one
of these robots, designed in the shape of a baby seal, to an elder-care facility, and an older woman began to talk to it
about the loss of her child. The robot seemed to be looking into her eyes. It seemed to be following the conversation.
The woman was comforted.
Technologies of Mobile Connection Through Texting and E-Mail
When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here connection works like a
symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being. Think of it as “I share,
therefore I am.” We use technology to define ourselves by sharing our thoughts and feelings as we’re having them. We
used to think, “I have a feeling; I want to make a call.” Now our impulse is, “I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.” So, in order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee from solitude,
our ability to be separate and gather ourselves. Lacking the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don’t
experience them as they are. We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are
unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how
to be lonely.
I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred
spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars “device-free zones.” We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work. There we are so busy communicating that we often
don’t have time to talk to one another about what really matters. Employees asked for casual Fridays; perhaps managers
should introduce conversational Thursdays. Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and
Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in
which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another. I spend the summers at a cottage
on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with
their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads
down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices.
So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation.
Technologies of Mobile Connection Through Texting and E-Mail
Technologies of Mobile Connection Through Texting and E-Mail
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