4 ms·

The Flight From Conversation

58 points by harscoat 15y ago

jseims 15y ago
As the first commenter almost an hour after posting, I just want to say it's ironic* that no one is discussing our flight from conversation. *ironic in the Alanis Morissette way, that is.
- incomethax 15y ago
  It's a Sunday. HN is usually slow on a Sunday. On one hand it's nice to see stories that wouldn't make it to the front page, on the other there isn't the same amount of conversation as on a weekday.
- OzzyB 15y ago
  Maybe the lack of comments is because the topic hits a little too close to home. I would also venture that, for HN folks around these parts, the more people looking at their smartphones and not engaging in real conversation, is well, good for business. </wit>
MBlume 15y ago
Automatic response: the author is obnoxiously neurotypical.
mjn 15y ago
There are parts of this that make sense to me, and parts that seem very strange. The pervasive interruptions is true, but tying it to online vs. non-online conversation I'm more skeptical of, and seems to be some kind of nostalgia for an idealized era of intellectual discussion in the cafe that few people ever really experienced. The article has an assumption sort of carried throughout, which I thought we had pretty much ditched in the 1990s, that online=shallow and IRL=deep, for various pop-linguistics reasons involving the supposed inability of textual conversation to carry nuance or emotion. I don't think studies have borne that out; among people who are "text fluent", i.e. regularly use real-time text chat for in-depth conversations, you find the usual range of linguistic features, including non-explicit conveyance of information, emotion, etc. There seems to be a persistent myth that text chat is equivalent to sending telegrams back and forth or something, which is only approximately true for people who have never developed any real experience or fluency with the medium (it does feel like that when I'm chatting online with my parents, who aren't really internet people, so I prefer to call/Skype them instead). I haven't found a clear online vs. offline dividing line in terms of which supports "real" conversations in my own friendships. With some people it's more one, with others more of the other. My closest friends are people I talk to extensively via both modalities, and you tend to get different sides of people through each. If anything, though, I would say I have somewhat more "real" conversations online. Maybe it's just who I end up being close friends with, but I find people are a little less guarded online, and actually worse at faking/masking emotion. Two of my friends in particular are very good at putting on an official face in person, such that even if you know them well it's hard to figure out what exactly they're thinking if they don't want you to. But online, when I talk to them regularly, it's nearly instantly obvious when they're in a bad mood or something is bugging them, by the way the cadence and subtleties of the conversation change, or change when specific things are mentioned. The changes are as much in what's omitted or different from usual as what's explicitly present in the text. But supposedly all those nuances don't exist!
- j_baker 15y ago
  Email definitely does have disadvantages over face-to-face conversation, and studies have borne this out: http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/09/emails-dark-side-10-psychology-studies.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/09/emails-dark-side-10-psychol... Anecdotally, I've had the same experience. I can't count the number of times I've gotten into a heated argument with someone over email, and resolved it within 2 minutes simply by talking it over face-to-face with them. To be clear, I'm not against email or anything like that. I just think it's important to realize that any medium of communication has inherent pros and cons.
  - mjn 15y ago
    Email I agree is considerably different. I think of it as fitting a different niche, but I'm admittedly not sure how most people use it. I don't consider it to be "conversation" in the same way as IM, IRC, or talking on the phone are conversation, though I guess you could use it that way. I try to use it more for intellectual exchange than personal conversation, in bigger, less frequent chunks. Same with HN comments or blog posts, for that matter, or even old-style letter-writing or office-memo circulation.
  - dalore 15y ago
    It's definitely easier to get angry at someone and express it via email and say stuff you wouldn't normally say face to face or via the phone. This is just my anecdote however, no studies to back it up.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      A corollary I've found is that it's easier to go along with things you don't really agree with in person, when in email you'd disagree. Especially for conflict-averse people. Pros and cons, I guess. If I know someone is conflict-averse I sometimes actively seek out their view by email after a meeting, to make sure I know what they really think.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  Would you ask a girl or guy [with whom you have an established non-sexual relationship] out for the first time over text message? Or ask someone to marry you? Would you break up with them over SMS? For the sake of your happiness, I'd hope the answer is "No." The potential for miscommunication is much higher once you add delay and limit expression to words and emoticons. Now think of how such an approach to communication might harm your prospects of establishing connections and managing relationships with potential business partners.
PaperclipTaken 15y ago
Even for things like formal communication I've found that phone calls and face-to-face conversations are more productive, creative, complex, but most importantly I've found that people are more willing to change their opinions in face-to-face conversations, as opposed to an email where you assert your opinion and then get to be happy with it while you wait for a response.
ShabbyDoo 15y ago
From the article: "It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news." This sums up my first thought when I read the headline. Perhaps the underlying societal problem is that many hold in contempt ideas too complex for sound bite summarization? So, changes in the ways we converse are merely a symptom of this underlying change? How many times have you watched a televised interview or sat in a meeting as someone was explaining an idea and become angered when the speaker was interrupted -- not to clarify, but to change the topic? I find myself saying in my head, "Let him speak!" I have no problem with others silencing some babbling fool, but to shut someone up simply because the idea at hand requires nuanced explanation severely limits the spectrum of ideas we ever will be able to consider. Perhaps, much like when people don't stand up and say something when another makes a bigoted joke, those of us sitting silently are partially to blame? I often say, "I'd really like to hear more about what Suzy thinks!", but only "often" in that I do so much more frequently than others. What would it take in, say, a company (or even department) to establish via social proof that those opposing complex thought simply because it is complex are the unacceptable ones?
- derleth 15y ago
  > Perhaps the underlying societal problem is that many hold in contempt ideas too complex for sound bite summarization? That's always been the case for most people; the difference now is, more and more of the 'most people' group have access to global audiences.
pron 15y ago
I think this article is both a bit too general and a bit too specific. It's too general in tying together all forms of online communication (text messages, e-mail, social networks), and too specific in focusing on the concept of "conversation". IMO, the main point is this: "Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit. And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too much, not too little — just right. Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology." A better discussion of this issue can be found in this recent Atlantic article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/8930/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/is-faceb... That article expands on the point mentioned in the quote: the fact that people invest a lot of time in polishing their online persona, which is separate from their real-life persona. Because the two are separate we may come to like one more than the other, or choose to identify ourselves more with our online persona because it's easier to control and perfect. And this has a converse effect. Other people polish their online personas as well, and this may (and does) cause depression (because our lives are not that perfect), which, in turn, makes us perfect our online personas further, continuing the cycle.
Skillset 15y ago
Here's the TED talk version of this article: "Connected, But Alone?" http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html

58 points by harscoat 15y ago

As the first commenter almost an hour after posting, I just want to say it's ironic* that no one is discussing our flight from conversation. *ironic in the Alanis Morissette way, that is.

incomethax 15y ago
It's a Sunday. HN is usually slow on a Sunday. On one hand it's nice to see stories that wouldn't make it to the front page, on the other there isn't the same amount of conversation as on a weekday.
OzzyB 15y ago
Maybe the lack of comments is because the topic hits a little too close to home. I would also venture that, for HN folks around these parts, the more people looking at their smartphones and not engaging in real conversation, is well, good for business. </wit>

MBlume 15y ago

Automatic response: the author is obnoxiously neurotypical.

mjn 15y ago

There are parts of this that make sense to me, and parts that seem very strange. The pervasive interruptions is true, but tying it to online vs. non-online conversation I'm more skeptical of, and seems to be some kind of nostalgia for an idealized era of intellectual discussion in the cafe that few people ever really experienced. The article has an assumption sort of carried throughout, which I thought we had pretty much ditched in the 1990s, that online=shallow and IRL=deep, for various pop-linguistics reasons involving the supposed inability of textual conversation to carry nuance or emotion. I don't think studies have borne that out; among people who are "text fluent", i.e. regularly use real-time text chat for in-depth conversations, you find the usual range of linguistic features, including non-explicit conveyance of information, emotion, etc. There seems to be a persistent myth that text chat is equivalent to sending telegrams back and forth or something, which is only approximately true for people who have never developed any real experience or fluency with the medium (it does feel like that when I'm chatting online with my parents, who aren't really internet people, so I prefer to call/Skype them instead). I haven't found a clear online vs. offline dividing line in terms of which supports "real" conversations in my own friendships. With some people it's more one, with others more of the other. My closest friends are people I talk to extensively via both modalities, and you tend to get different sides of people through each. If anything, though, I would say I have somewhat more "real" conversations online. Maybe it's just who I end up being close friends with, but I find people are a little less guarded online, and actually worse at faking/masking emotion. Two of my friends in particular are very good at putting on an official face in person, such that even if you know them well it's hard to figure out what exactly they're thinking if they don't want you to. But online, when I talk to them regularly, it's nearly instantly obvious when they're in a bad mood or something is bugging them, by the way the cadence and subtleties of the conversation change, or change when specific things are mentioned. The changes are as much in what's omitted or different from usual as what's explicitly present in the text. But supposedly all those nuances don't exist!

j_baker 15y ago
Email definitely does have disadvantages over face-to-face conversation, and studies have borne this out: http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/09/emails-dark-side-10-psychology-studies.php http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/09/emails-dark-side-10-psychol... Anecdotally, I've had the same experience. I can't count the number of times I've gotten into a heated argument with someone over email, and resolved it within 2 minutes simply by talking it over face-to-face with them. To be clear, I'm not against email or anything like that. I just think it's important to realize that any medium of communication has inherent pros and cons.
- mjn 15y ago
  Email I agree is considerably different. I think of it as fitting a different niche, but I'm admittedly not sure how most people use it. I don't consider it to be "conversation" in the same way as IM, IRC, or talking on the phone are conversation, though I guess you could use it that way. I try to use it more for intellectual exchange than personal conversation, in bigger, less frequent chunks. Same with HN comments or blog posts, for that matter, or even old-style letter-writing or office-memo circulation.
- dalore 15y ago
  It's definitely easier to get angry at someone and express it via email and say stuff you wouldn't normally say face to face or via the phone. This is just my anecdote however, no studies to back it up.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    A corollary I've found is that it's easier to go along with things you don't really agree with in person, when in email you'd disagree. Especially for conflict-averse people. Pros and cons, I guess. If I know someone is conflict-averse I sometimes actively seek out their view by email after a meeting, to make sure I know what they really think.
WiseWeasel 15y ago
Would you ask a girl or guy [with whom you have an established non-sexual relationship] out for the first time over text message? Or ask someone to marry you? Would you break up with them over SMS? For the sake of your happiness, I'd hope the answer is "No." The potential for miscommunication is much higher once you add delay and limit expression to words and emoticons. Now think of how such an approach to communication might harm your prospects of establishing connections and managing relationships with potential business partners.

PaperclipTaken 15y ago

Even for things like formal communication I've found that phone calls and face-to-face conversations are more productive, creative, complex, but most importantly I've found that people are more willing to change their opinions in face-to-face conversations, as opposed to an email where you assert your opinion and then get to be happy with it while you wait for a response.

ShabbyDoo 15y ago

From the article: "It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news." This sums up my first thought when I read the headline. Perhaps the underlying societal problem is that many hold in contempt ideas too complex for sound bite summarization? So, changes in the ways we converse are merely a symptom of this underlying change? How many times have you watched a televised interview or sat in a meeting as someone was explaining an idea and become angered when the speaker was interrupted -- not to clarify, but to change the topic? I find myself saying in my head, "Let him speak!" I have no problem with others silencing some babbling fool, but to shut someone up simply because the idea at hand requires nuanced explanation severely limits the spectrum of ideas we ever will be able to consider. Perhaps, much like when people don't stand up and say something when another makes a bigoted joke, those of us sitting silently are partially to blame? I often say, "I'd really like to hear more about what Suzy thinks!", but only "often" in that I do so much more frequently than others. What would it take in, say, a company (or even department) to establish via social proof that those opposing complex thought simply because it is complex are the unacceptable ones?

derleth 15y ago
> Perhaps the underlying societal problem is that many hold in contempt ideas too complex for sound bite summarization? That's always been the case for most people; the difference now is, more and more of the 'most people' group have access to global audiences.

pron 15y ago

I think this article is both a bit too general and a bit too specific. It's too general in tying together all forms of online communication (text messages, e-mail, social networks), and too specific in focusing on the concept of "conversation". IMO, the main point is this: "Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit. And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too much, not too little — just right. Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology." A better discussion of this issue can be found in this recent Atlantic article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/8930/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/is-faceb... That article expands on the point mentioned in the quote: the fact that people invest a lot of time in polishing their online persona, which is separate from their real-life persona. Because the two are separate we may come to like one more than the other, or choose to identify ourselves more with our online persona because it's easier to control and perfect. And this has a converse effect. Other people polish their online personas as well, and this may (and does) cause depression (because our lives are not that perfect), which, in turn, makes us perfect our online personas further, continuing the cycle.

Skillset 15y ago

Here's the TED talk version of this article: "Connected, But Alone?" http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html