Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

“But if we don’t have experience with solitude—and this is often the case today—we start to equate loneliness and solitude. This reflects the impoverishment of our experience. If we don’t know the satisfactions of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness.”

“Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.”

“The web promises to make our world bigger. But as it works now, it also narrows our exposure to ideas. We can end up in a bubble in which we hear only the ideas we already know. Or already like.”

“In order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee solitude. In time, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves is diminished. If we don’t know who we are when we are alone, we turn to other people to support our sense of self. This makes it impossible to fully experience others as who they are. We take what we need from them in bits and pieces; it is as though we use them as spare parts to support our fragile selves.”

“When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free. Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive.”

“is not a problem looking for a quick fix. Life is a conversation and you need places to have it. The virtual provides us with more spaces for these conversations and these are enriching. But what makes the physical so precious is that it supports continuity in a different way; it doesn’t come and go, and it binds people to it. You can’t just log off or drop out.”

“We are at a moment of temptation, ready to turn to machines for companionship even as we seem pained or inconvenienced to engage with each other in settings as simple as a grocery store. We want technology to step up as we ask people to step back.”

“Intelligence once meant more than what any artificial intelligence does. It used to include sensibility, sensitivity, awareness, discernment, reason, acumen, and wit.”

“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. But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiency of mere connection. I fear we forget the difference.”

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

“To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, to defer going “elsewhere” at least some of the time.”

“The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought.”

“But these conversations require time and space, and we say we’re too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, 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. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter.”

“The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this “the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking.” Von Kleist quotes the French proverb that “appetite comes from eating” and observes that it is equally the case that “ideas come from speaking.” The best thoughts, in his view, can be almost unintelligible as they emerge; what matters most is risky, thrilling conversation as a crucible for discovery.”

“These days, students struggle with conversation. What makes sense is to engage them in it. The more you think about educational technology, with all its bells and whistles, the more you circle back to the simple power of conversation.”

“What do we forget when we talk to machines? We forget what is special about being human. We forget what it means to have authentic conversation. Machines are programmed to have conversations “as if” they understood what the conversation is about. So when we talk to them, we, too, are reduced and confined to the “as if.”

“In all of these cases, we use technology to “dial down” human contact, to titrate its nature and extent. People avoid face-to-face conversation but are comforted by being in touch with people—and sometimes with a lot of people—who are emotionally kept at bay. It’s another instance of the Goldilocks effect. It’s part of the move from conversation to mere connection.”

“In family conversation, much of the work is done as children learn they are in a place they can come back to, tomorrow and tomorrow. When digital media encourage us to edit ourselves until we have said the “right thing,” we can lose sight of the important thing: Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation. In family conversations, children learn that what can matter most is not the information shared but the relationships sustained. It is hard to sustain those relationships if you are on your phone.”

“You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.”

“We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us less lonely. But we are at risk because it is actually the reverse: If we are unable to be alone, we will be more lonely. And if we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. Yet”

“In recent years, psychologists have learned more about how creative ideas come from the reveries of solitude. When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free. Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive. For some, this goes against cultural expectations. American culture tends to worship sociality. We have wanted to believe that we are our most creative during “brainstorming” and “groupthink” sessions. But this turns out not to be the case. New ideas are more likely to emerge from people thinking on their own. Solitude is where we learn to trust our imaginations.”

“if we don’t have experience with solitude—and this is often the case today—we start to equate loneliness and solitude.”

“Mobile technology is here to stay, along with all the wonders it brings. Yet it is time for us to consider how it may get in the way of other things we hold dear—and how once we recognize this, we can take action: We can both redesign technology and change how we bring it into our lives. A”

“Loneliness is painful, emotionally and even physically, born from a “want of intimacy” when we need it most, in early childhood. Solitude—the capacity to be contentedly and constructively alone—is built from successful human connection at just that time.”

“A similar concern about using the web to provide just-in-time information shows up among physicians arguing the future of medical education. Increasingly, and particularly while making a first diagnosis, physicians rely on handheld databases, what one philosopher calls “E-memory.” The physicians type in symptoms and the digital tool recommends a potential diagnosis and suggested course of treatment. Eighty-nine percent of medical residents regard one of these E-memory tools, UpToDate, as their first choice for answering clinical questions. But will this “just-in-time” and “just enough” information teach young doctors to organize their own ideas and draw their own conclusions?”

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN”

“We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we’re with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves”

“craves control more than sociability. She will email a “Sorry” instead of delivering a face-to-face apology; at work, as in her personal life, when she faces a difficult conversation, she makes every effort to sidestep it with an email.”

“Solitude reinforces a secure sense of self, and with that, the capacity for empathy. Then, conversation with others provides rich material for self-reflection. Just as alone we prepare to talk together, together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.”

“It is easier to face an emergency than to have those difficult conversations. When we go into crisis mode, we give ourselves permission to defer the kinds of conversations that politics requires. And right now, our politics requires conversations, too long deferred, about being a self and a citizen in the world of big data.”