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>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value

• behringer 7y ago
  Not imo. It's like the worst. My experience: We're having a really nice conversation about movies. Oh who was the actor in such and such? Oh I dunno, let me tell you about another movie I he might be in that I really enjoyed. Third guy: Let me read to you some IMDB right now so we can stop talking about what interests anybody and listen to the entire synopsis about the guy that any of us could do in our own time.
• mistersquid 7y ago
  > It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact. As a former professor, visiting a professor during, say, office hours, is not quite the same as spending time with a loved one (whether that be a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, what-have-you). The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place. In many interpersonal meetings between loved ones, knowledge and information are a secondary or even more remote consideration to the basis of the meeting. In such cases, looking up trivial information is not necessarily a form of care but a form of distraction. It takes judgement to know when looking up a piece of information is germane to the interpersonal context or whether doing so is incidental. EDIT: Furnish missing object "care".
  • jasode 7y ago
    > The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place. Yes, that underlying context is true but you're missing the point of my example. The professor example was not about "information" vs "friendship". It was meant to illustrate "engaged" vs "disengaged" in the conversation which is orthogonal to whether the context is teacher/student or friend/friend. For example, professor X sits there with arms folded across the chest thinking the student doesn't really care about his class and is only there to lobby for a good grade. Therefore the professor just answers, "Uhm, yes, I see. Well, I don't know what to say other than make sure you get your final paper in by next week". On the other hand, professor Y was genuinely intrigued by something the student said and it spurs him to search his bookshelf and clarify something. He didn't have to physically get up to get a book but the conversation was engaging enough to do so. When the professor temporarily turns his back to the student to fetch a relevant book, that doesn't mean he's less disconnected from the conversation; he's actually more connected. That's what I'm trying to convey: maybe measuring how much time your friend's eyes are glued to your face isn't the best way to measure connectedness. E.g. The professor X with the unbroken stare towards to the student was actually less engaged than professor Y that paused the conversation to find a relevant book. Like I said previously, I can't argue with others' feelings. This thread shows me that everybody seems to have different thresholds of annoyance for others using their smartphone to look up something. Personally, I'm never slighted or offended by it. I actually feel complimented if our conversation prompted their fingers to type out a search request because of something I said. Just last week, I was talking with a friend about iron supplements and as we were talking, she typed in a search query for the most iron-rich foods. It was great as the conversation then flowed into spinach, tofu, etc.
• Atheros 7y ago
  The problem is that it often takes a while to look up some information and even small breaks in the conversation leave the other person sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Often when someone asks a question, they don't care that much about the answer; they're just making conversation and getting to know you as a person: what you know, care about, and how you react to things. A lot of people are bad at recognizing whether the information they looked up is worth killing the conversation for 20 seconds. Often it isn't! If I wanted to know the answer to a simple question I just asked I could look it up myself. But I didn't! I asked you. That is different from your professor example since he presumably knows so much more about the topic, he can help you learn what to look up. Looking through a photo album together can often spark more conversation and keeps the other person engaged. The same isn't true of a phone.
• layoric 7y ago
  > Or when you talk to a friend and you mention something about a specific place and they say "Oh, I happen to have a photo of that" so they go get their photo album and show it to me. That's staying connected with our conversation. Entirely depends, this has happened many times to me with a different result. Eg the place was less important to a story being told and looking in their phone for a photo takes minutes and the rest of the narrative was almost completely ignored or derailed by a different photo. That’s not being “connected” to the conversation IMO, that’s being narcissistic. Where as a simple “oh, I’ve been there” without the phone can be encouraging the story teller and showing interest in the conversation, pulling out your device I think can show the opposite.