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Sherry Turkle - Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

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Sherry Turkle Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
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Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivityand why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we dont have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.
We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square.
The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity.
But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures.
Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most humanand humanizingthing that we do.
The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.

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ALSO BY SHERRY TURKLE Psychoanalytic Politics The Second Self Life on the - photo 1

ALSO BY SHERRY TURKLE

Psychoanalytic Politics

The Second Self

Life on the Screen

Evocative Objects (editor)

Falling for Science (editor)

The Inner History of Devices (editor)

Simulation and Its Discontents

Alone Together

Reclaiming Conversation The Power of Talk in a Digital Age - image 2

PENGUIN PRESS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

penguin.com

Reclaiming Conversation The Power of Talk in a Digital Age - image 3

Copyright 2015 by Sherry Turkle

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Selection by Louis C.K. on pages 5960. Used by permission of Louis C.K.

ISBN: 978-1-101-61739-7

Version_1

To Rebecca, Kelly, and Emily,
with thanks for all the kitchen table conversations

Contents

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN

We had talk enough, but no conversation.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, THERAMBLER (1752)

The Case for Conversation
The Empathy Diaries

Twelve-year-olds play on the playground like eight-year-olds.... They dont seem able to put themselves in the place of other children.

THE DEAN OF THE HOLBROOKE MIDDLE SCHOOL, COMMENTING ON AN EMPATHY GAP AMONG STUDENTS

W hy a book on conversation? Were talking all the time. We text and post and chat. We may even begin to feel more at home in the world of our screens. Among family and friends, among colleagues and lovers, we turn to our phones instead of each other. We readily admit we would rather send an electronic message or mail than commit to a face-to-face meeting or a telephone call.

This new mediated life has gotten us into trouble. Face-to-face conversation is the most humanand humanizingthing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. Its where we develop the capacity for empathy. Its where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood. And conversation advances self-reflection, the conversations with ourselves that are the cornerstone of early development and continue throughout life.

But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as were constantly connected to each other. For on our screens, we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be. Of course, performance is part of any meeting, anywhere, but online and at our leisure, it is easy to compose, edit, and improve as we revise.

We say we turn to our phones when were bored. And . It means maintaining eye contact while texting. My students tell me they do it all the time and that its not that hard.

We begin to think of ourselves as a tribe of one, loyal to our own party. We check our messages during a quiet moment or when the pull of the online world simply feels irresistible. Even children text each other rather than talk face-to-face with friendsor, for that matter, rather than daydream, where they can take time alone with their thoughts.

It all adds up to a flight from conversationat least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, conversation in which we play with ideas, in which we allow 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.

But these conversations require time and space, and we say were too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, inhibits conversations that matter. The very sight of a phone on the landscape leaves us feeling less connected to each other, less invested in each other.

Despite the seriousness of our moment, I write with optimism. Once aware, we can begin to rethink our practices. When we do, conversation is there to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure.

They Make Acquaintances, but Their Connections Seem Superficial

I n December 2013, I was contacted by the dean of the Holbrooke School, a middle school in upstate New York. I was asked to consult with its faculty about what they saw as a disturbance in their students friendship patterns. In her invitation, the dean put it this way: Students dont seem to be making friendships as before. They make acquaintances, but their connections seem superficial.

The case of the superficial acquaintances in middle school was compelling. It was of a piece with what I was hearing in other schools, about older students. And so it was decided that I would join the Holbrooke teachers on a faculty retreat. I brought along a new notebook; after an hour, I wrote on its cover The Empathy Diaries.

For thats what the Holbrooke teachers are thinking about. Children at Holbrooke are not developing empathy in the way that years of teaching suggested they would. Ava Reade, the dean of the school, says that she rarely intervenes in student social arrangements, but recently she had to. A seventh grader tried to exclude a classmate from a school social event. Reade called the remiss seventh grader into her office and asked why it happened. The girl didnt have much to say:

[The seventh grader] was almost robotic in her response. She said, I dont have feelings about this. She couldnt read the signals that the other student was hurt.

These kids arent cruel. But they are not emotionally developed. Twelve-year-olds play on the playground like eight-year-olds. The way they exclude one another is the way eight-year-olds would play. They dont seem able to put themselves in the place of other children. They say to other students: You cant play with us.

They are not developing that way of relating where they listen and learn how to look at each other and hear each other.

The Holbrooke teachers are enthusiastic users of educational technology. But on their retreat, they follow what some call : Indication of harm, not proof of harm, is our call to action. These teachers believe they see indications of harm. It is a struggle to get children to talk to each other in class, to directly address each other. It is a struggle to get them to meet with faculty. And one teacher observes: The [students] sit in the dining hall and look at their phones. When they share things together, what they are sharing is what is on their phones. Is this the new conversation? If so, it is not doing the work of the old conversation. As these teachers see it, the old conversation taught empathy. These students seem to understand each other less.

I was invited to Holbrooke because for many decades I have studied childrens development in technological culture. I began in the late 1970s, when a few schools were experimenting with personal computers in classrooms or special computer laboratories. I work on this question still, when many children come to school with a tablet or laptop of their own, or one their school has issued.

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