Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

by Sherry Turkle

Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do.

Home visits Source—crisis of engagement Corwin lecture

these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other.

! Home Visits Again, from crisis of engagement Corwin lecture

daydream, where they can take time alone with their thoughts.

ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable. Yet these are the conversations where empathy and intimacy flourish and social action gains strength.

These are the conversations in which the creative collaborations of education and business thrive.

we find traces of a new “silent spring”—a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment.

technology is implicated in an assault on empathy.

!

even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter.

These kids aren’t cruel. But they are not emotionally developed. Twelve-year-olds play on the playground like eight-year-olds.

!

It is a struggle to get children to talk to each other in class, to directly address each other.

Homework idea- Talk with a friend about any pre-approved topic—due Tuesday—for a full non-stop minute

Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation.

From the early days, I saw that computers offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the programs got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy.

The demands of intimacy

Time in simulation gets children ready for more time in simulation. Time with people teaches children how to be in a relationship, beginning with the ability to have a conversation.

Conversation is on the path toward the experience of intimacy, community, and communion. Reclaiming conversation is a step toward reclaiming our most fundamental human values.

Home visits

clinical psychologist.

In the classroom, conversations carry more than the details of a subject;

teachers are there to help students learn how to ask questions and be dissatisfied with easy answers. More than this, conversations with a good teacher communicate that learning isn’t all about the answers. It’s about what the answers mean. Conversations help students build narratives—whether about gun control or the Civil War—that will allow them to learn and remember in a way that has meaning for them.

In therapy, conversation explores the meanings of the relationships that animate our lives.

It attends to pauses, hesitations, associations, the things that are said through silence.

to a kind of conversation that doesn’t give “advice” but helps people discover what they have hidden from themselves so ...

Thoreau

the cabin furniture he chose to secure that ambition suggests no simple “retreat.” He said that in his cabin there were “three chairs—one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.”

Post for small groups

In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours.

When we are secure in ourselves we are able to listen to other people and really hear what they have to say. And then in conversation with other people we become better at inner dialogue.

Good for the society-obsessed 7th grader

Solitude reinforces a secure sense of self, and with that, the capacity for empathy.

Then, conversation with others provides rich material for self-reflection.

together we learn how to engage in a more prod...

book—for

!

We struggle to pay attention to each other, and what suffers is our ability to know ourselves.

Many of the things we all struggle with in love and work can be helped by conversation.

Technology enchants; it makes us forget what we know about life.

a problem with a solution: If we make space for conversation, we come back to each other and we come back to ourselves.

This is the wrong time to step back. Those who understand how conversation works—no matter what their ages—need to step up and pass on what they know.

We can step up in our families and friendships, but there are also the public conversations of Thoreau’s third chair. These conversations, too, need mentors. Here I think of teachers and students: The classroom is a social space where students can see how thinking happens.

! Home visits

an open laptop will multitask in class. And we have learned that this will degrade the performance not only of the student with the open machine but of all the students around him or her.

!

That crawl under the news began during the Iran hostage crisis of 1981. No matter what the news, Americans wanted instant updates on the American prisoners in Iran.

Fun fact

it’s important not to confuse the difficult with the impossible. If we commit ourselves, it’s work we know how to do.

!

If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence.

It is a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications.

I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.

human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding.

!

When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiencies of mere connection.

!

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with conversation! It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.”

This reticence about conversation in “real time” is not confined to the young. Across generations, people struggle to control what feels like an endless stream of “incoming”—information to assimilate and act on and interactions to manage.

In person, we have access to the messages carried in the face, the voice, and the body. Online, we settle for simpler fare: We get our efficiency and our chance to edit, but we learn to ask questions that a return email can answer.

Facts Home visits

The results were clear: In-person conversation led to the most emotional connection and

the forced urgency of TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

we become most human to each other.

Human ethical compact

if we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely.

Research tells us that being comfortable with our vulnerabilities is central to our happiness, our creativity, and even our productivity.