I'm at my best in the flesh - in person
April 22, 2012 5:42 PM Subscribe
In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right. The flight from conversation.
My mother e-mailed this to me yesterday. Do you suppose she was trying to tell me something?
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:52 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:52 PM on April 22, 2012
My boyfriend and I sat next to each other on the couch and read this this morning.
posted by peacheater at 5:58 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by peacheater at 5:58 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
Turkle seems to be making a plea for embodiment and sustained social interaction. She lauds connection via technology, but laments that we take it in sips, without the complexity of real conversation. Which makes me wonder why she doesn't mention the role of virtual worlds, where long distances are breached by copresence in avatar interactions. After a brief surge of interest in virtual worlds like Second Life, authors of social commentary like Turkle seem to have lost interest in them, but I think that it is because they can produce an experience of embodied copresence that their significance will rise over time. They facilitate a true experience of deep and personal communication--a good counterbalance to the shallowness of platforms like Twitter.
posted by DrMew at 5:59 PM on April 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by DrMew at 5:59 PM on April 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
I flagged this article in semaphore to a passing ship today.
posted by cmoj at 6:01 PM on April 22, 2012 [7 favorites]
posted by cmoj at 6:01 PM on April 22, 2012 [7 favorites]
That bit about the 16 year-old kid who wants to learn how to have a conversation is incredibly depressing (in part because it's my generation who shaped the internet into what it is).
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:01 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:01 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
The article seems to be more about synchronous vs. asynchronous communications than anything else.
posted by squorch at 6:06 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by squorch at 6:06 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
Previously; much of this article comes from the linked TEDTalk, which I recommend watching/reading.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 6:16 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 6:16 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
I'm not convinced that this is about technology. People have always walked down the street focussed about something quite different than the world before them. People have always looked at people other than the person they're talking to. Etc.
The technology that behavior more evident, perhaps. No, I suspect this "tech is keeping us apart" is the kind of worry-warting that was once directed at people who read comics, watched TV, listened to the radio.
Were ham radio operators - enjoying themselves for 100 years talking to people hundreds or thousands of miles away - really "keeping people at a distance"? Or communicating with people who they'd otherwise never met?
When people are keeping touch by texting with people who otherwise would otherwise in fact be at a distance and really, really out of touch, I count that as a socializing plus (however important that really is).
I'm more fascinated by the 'tch tch, we're coming apart' tone of the endless parade of worry-warting on this topic. What are these people really worried about?
posted by Twang at 6:23 PM on April 22, 2012 [10 favorites]
The technology that behavior more evident, perhaps. No, I suspect this "tech is keeping us apart" is the kind of worry-warting that was once directed at people who read comics, watched TV, listened to the radio.
Were ham radio operators - enjoying themselves for 100 years talking to people hundreds or thousands of miles away - really "keeping people at a distance"? Or communicating with people who they'd otherwise never met?
When people are keeping touch by texting with people who otherwise would otherwise in fact be at a distance and really, really out of touch, I count that as a socializing plus (however important that really is).
I'm more fascinated by the 'tch tch, we're coming apart' tone of the endless parade of worry-warting on this topic. What are these people really worried about?
posted by Twang at 6:23 PM on April 22, 2012 [10 favorites]
There seems to be a lot of repeated in-depth conversations here on Metafilter (I remember there being more, but I can't find them at the moment) re: loneliness and isolation vs. social networking, the Internet and so on. Maybe if we all got together in one big room we could come to an agreement about the topic once and for all - y'know, like previous generations got everything worked out before telephones, TV, etc....
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:36 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:36 PM on April 22, 2012
Twang: What are these people really worried about?
Finding suitably hand-wringy topics for magazine articles and books?
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:37 PM on April 22, 2012
Finding suitably hand-wringy topics for magazine articles and books?
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:37 PM on April 22, 2012
I'm more fascinated by the 'tch tch, we're coming apart' tone of the endless parade of worry-warting on this topic. What are these people really worried about?
I don't know, I think she's pretty spot on for a lot of the motivations why people act in this way. But even if you don't agree with her beliefs on motivation, you can't argue with the raw data of how people are communicating in different ways, and her focus really seems to be about the consequences of that changed behavior. Maybe it's no big deal, but it seems like there is a fundamental shift in how kids communicate now than they did 10 years ago (before every 6th grader had a cell phone). I think it definitely impacts how social groups form and interact.
It's obvious how being able to communicate in these new ways expands our ability to maintain relationships over distance, but her argument seems to be that we are becoming trained to manage ALL relationships in that way - i.e. her photo of her daughter and 3 friends all standing around looking at their own phones.
Why do people have a straightforward conversation over text that takes 5 minutes when they could have a 30 second phone call instead? It's an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people.
posted by lubujackson at 6:44 PM on April 22, 2012 [5 favorites]
I don't know, I think she's pretty spot on for a lot of the motivations why people act in this way. But even if you don't agree with her beliefs on motivation, you can't argue with the raw data of how people are communicating in different ways, and her focus really seems to be about the consequences of that changed behavior. Maybe it's no big deal, but it seems like there is a fundamental shift in how kids communicate now than they did 10 years ago (before every 6th grader had a cell phone). I think it definitely impacts how social groups form and interact.
It's obvious how being able to communicate in these new ways expands our ability to maintain relationships over distance, but her argument seems to be that we are becoming trained to manage ALL relationships in that way - i.e. her photo of her daughter and 3 friends all standing around looking at their own phones.
Why do people have a straightforward conversation over text that takes 5 minutes when they could have a 30 second phone call instead? It's an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people.
posted by lubujackson at 6:44 PM on April 22, 2012 [5 favorites]
This seems like a rehash of http://www.metafilter.com/114618/Alone-Together
posted by RGD at 6:57 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by RGD at 6:57 PM on April 22, 2012
I flagged it as a double after the first link from The Biggest Dreamer. The community can decide if it stays or goes.
posted by cashman at 7:01 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by cashman at 7:01 PM on April 22, 2012
Metafilter: increasingly unhappy with Facebook
Metafilter: the medium isn't designed for it
Metafilter: finding suitably hand-wringy topics
Metafilter: a good counterbalance to the shallowness of platforms like Twitter
Metafilter: the kind of worry-warting that was once directed at people who read comics
Metafilter: an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people
Metafilter: seems like a rehash
Metafilter: the community can decide if it stays or goes
posted by michaelh at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: the medium isn't designed for it
Metafilter: finding suitably hand-wringy topics
Metafilter: a good counterbalance to the shallowness of platforms like Twitter
Metafilter: the kind of worry-warting that was once directed at people who read comics
Metafilter: an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people
Metafilter: seems like a rehash
Metafilter: the community can decide if it stays or goes
posted by michaelh at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Why do people have a straightforward conversation over text that takes 5 minutes when they could have a 30 second phone call instead? It's an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people.
Yes. My question exactly. I have friends who insist on texting where there are issues about the sequencing of messages, frequent messages of "what?", and the idiotic time expansion mentioned above. What is it about people that leads them to this ridiculous downgrade of basic communication? A former employer replaced simple bulletin boards covered with high bandwidth paper with TVs nailed to the wall with sequenced low res multi-pane views. That no one looks at. Technology is not improving communication. We are drifting apart in a sea of low-res bitmaps, incomplete sentences larded with acronyms, and content free noise mistaken as meaningful conversation. What has happened to us?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:27 PM on April 22, 2012 [5 favorites]
Yes. My question exactly. I have friends who insist on texting where there are issues about the sequencing of messages, frequent messages of "what?", and the idiotic time expansion mentioned above. What is it about people that leads them to this ridiculous downgrade of basic communication? A former employer replaced simple bulletin boards covered with high bandwidth paper with TVs nailed to the wall with sequenced low res multi-pane views. That no one looks at. Technology is not improving communication. We are drifting apart in a sea of low-res bitmaps, incomplete sentences larded with acronyms, and content free noise mistaken as meaningful conversation. What has happened to us?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:27 PM on April 22, 2012 [5 favorites]
dunkadunc: "This is why I am increasingly unhappy with Facebook and even Metafilter. I want to have in-depth conversations, but the medium isn't designed for it."
his is certainly the case with Facebook, Twitter et al, but MetaFilter is almost the perfect medium for in-depth conversations about all sorts of topics and is a great solution to the tyranny of distance that makes it hard to truly get a wide variety of viewpoints simultaneously. Unfortunately, it's both very hard to have a conversation with a dozen people at once and difficult to sustain a conversation when the is a fire hose of new threads coming up behind that suck people's attention away. I often see in-depth conversations here just suddenly stop because the participants seemingly saw a new shiny thing and went chasing after that. I think that's partly why we often don't come to any conclusions or agreement and are destined to re-live the argument later.
posted by dg at 8:47 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
his is certainly the case with Facebook, Twitter et al, but MetaFilter is almost the perfect medium for in-depth conversations about all sorts of topics and is a great solution to the tyranny of distance that makes it hard to truly get a wide variety of viewpoints simultaneously. Unfortunately, it's both very hard to have a conversation with a dozen people at once and difficult to sustain a conversation when the is a fire hose of new threads coming up behind that suck people's attention away. I often see in-depth conversations here just suddenly stop because the participants seemingly saw a new shiny thing and went chasing after that. I think that's partly why we often don't come to any conclusions or agreement and are destined to re-live the argument later.
posted by dg at 8:47 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
So when Facebook finally has its IPO, will they factor in the residuals and royalties from the sociology-industrial complex when they do the valuation?
posted by gompa at 9:01 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by gompa at 9:01 PM on April 22, 2012
I think that's partly why we often don't come to any conclusions or agreement and are destined to re-live the argument later.
That is probably the thing that bothers me most. There is no way currently to weaponize metafilter. You see great people discussing great things, but after a while it just comes back again and even though the discussion went somewhere, it starts back at an earlier point. I feel like we need a metafilter library or something. Some place that harnesses all the learning that should be going on, and holds it so that it doesn't get lost, as you say, in the barrage of the shiny.
posted by cashman at 9:03 PM on April 22, 2012
That is probably the thing that bothers me most. There is no way currently to weaponize metafilter. You see great people discussing great things, but after a while it just comes back again and even though the discussion went somewhere, it starts back at an earlier point. I feel like we need a metafilter library or something. Some place that harnesses all the learning that should be going on, and holds it so that it doesn't get lost, as you say, in the barrage of the shiny.
posted by cashman at 9:03 PM on April 22, 2012
I don't see knowledge production as one of Metafilter's functions, cashman. At their best, conversations here can help us improve our ideas (refining the good ones, dropping the bad ones), but in my opinion that can only happen here through the actual process of having a dialogue, not building a library of facts or a talk.origins-style FAQ.
posted by twirlip at 9:14 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by twirlip at 9:14 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Technology is not improving communication. We are drifting apart in a sea of low-res bitmaps, incomplete sentences larded with acronyms, and content free noise mistaken as meaningful conversation. What has happened to us?
Socrates, or one of his Writing based proxies (who got to put all of their own hangups and pet-theories into his words [yet another misleading and truth depleting power of i(a)llusion that writing gives, where speech, or other imminent communication forms such as signing have none]), might say (write/TXT that) the downfall started when they started with the Empire/Religious Ideation of writing, and it really didn't matter that the gatekeepers over time made up rules like "good grammar", "spelling", and such, that it was all ruinous, and contrary to individuals learning, and accreting knowledge, and so forming that knowledge into wisdom, it wouldn't have mattered if they had started with no-rules, informal "TXT-speak", it is all a technological barrier to learning, to understanding.
(which is great if you live next door to the master of whatever you are best suited to learn... but sucks if you live in upper-lower Outer middle modern Europe, with no books, or no community within which to learn skills, wisdom, or otherwise).
Why do people have a straightforward conversation over text that takes 5 minutes when they could have a 30 second phone call instead? It's an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people.
tl:dr, PEOPLE HATE (fear?) SAYING GOODBYE ("properly"). There is a massively disproportionate social anxiety towards phones, and it hinges on an even deeper-set anxiety towards the "last sight of a friend, as they disappear on the edge of the horizon", see also, "I love you, no I love you more, ok, then you hang up first, no, you hang up first"... the behavior of lovers makes it easier to spot social anxieties).
If you are talking, you need to awkwardly (or coolly, but not tooo coolly) find a way to say such, without sap, without investing too much (in the age of authenticity, people seem to have become deeply sparse in their use of authenticity, lest they be mocked, irony, cool-detachment is what is sure to not be mocked in this age, why put your "real" self out there when people will just piss on the authentic gesture, snort, and look at some ironically racist cartoons or something that all the olds like to do). Texting takes uncertainties out of the communications equation. There are few surprises, when your interlocutor is not aware of your reactions (the surprise may still exist, and occur, but it becomes theoretical, it loses its power, just as those "Socratic turns" lose their literal "shaming" power when they are written down, and sit for centuries before being "interacted with", or when they are interacted with alone, without engaging in a group learning setting (it is easy to come in the next day all "Wisened", and then SHAME someone IRL, in person, the next day, by utilizing to your own advantage what you were unaware of just the day before). This is the illusion of wisdom that drives entire industries around us.
Think of the sitcoms where the one person blurts out "ILoveYou" (inappropriately?) at the end of a conversation, and then... it is awkward, well that wasn't just made up, it probably happened thousands of times... with a brain-->thumbs-->sending barrier, it is easier to blunt emotions in text, easier to filter thoughts before sending, and adds a technical layer between bare biological signaling of speaking (brain-->mouth-digitized-->ears).
Just think of all the permutations of "good-bye" that exist, later, lates, Peace, Peaceout, catchuontheflipside, sayonara, it is a nexus of social, cultural and psychological hangups (so to speak). We dress up our goodbyes all the time, and yet they are still strange experiences, that leave us, empty, and awkward.
It may all boil down to the very deeply ingrained cultural idea of having to express lamentations, towards some sinful past, "confessions" of regrets unspoken, possible last encounters, definitely the "confessions" of the past, lamenting the original sin, goodbye, and when we're gone, thing, a "Euro-tragic"/regret thing, "good-bye", rather than a very different cultural norm, seen in cultures that are not of Western European origin, perhaps like expressing the concept of "Until we again meet/greet each other next", which is far more future positive, future focused.
It might also just have something to do with Freud. Or the youngs are just all lazy.
We may well be communicationally stunted beings, but we have a great potential (reference to youngs and olds hopes to connote my ironic detachment, to avoid accusations of authenticity on the square).
posted by infinite intimation at 9:20 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Socrates, or one of his Writing based proxies (who got to put all of their own hangups and pet-theories into his words [yet another misleading and truth depleting power of i(a)llusion that writing gives, where speech, or other imminent communication forms such as signing have none]), might say (write/TXT that) the downfall started when they started with the Empire/Religious Ideation of writing, and it really didn't matter that the gatekeepers over time made up rules like "good grammar", "spelling", and such, that it was all ruinous, and contrary to individuals learning, and accreting knowledge, and so forming that knowledge into wisdom, it wouldn't have mattered if they had started with no-rules, informal "TXT-speak", it is all a technological barrier to learning, to understanding.
(which is great if you live next door to the master of whatever you are best suited to learn... but sucks if you live in upper-lower Outer middle modern Europe, with no books, or no community within which to learn skills, wisdom, or otherwise).
Why do people have a straightforward conversation over text that takes 5 minutes when they could have a 30 second phone call instead? It's an interesting interaction that has become a social norm for many people.
tl:dr, PEOPLE HATE (fear?) SAYING GOODBYE ("properly"). There is a massively disproportionate social anxiety towards phones, and it hinges on an even deeper-set anxiety towards the "last sight of a friend, as they disappear on the edge of the horizon", see also, "I love you, no I love you more, ok, then you hang up first, no, you hang up first"... the behavior of lovers makes it easier to spot social anxieties).
If you are talking, you need to awkwardly (or coolly, but not tooo coolly) find a way to say such, without sap, without investing too much (in the age of authenticity, people seem to have become deeply sparse in their use of authenticity, lest they be mocked, irony, cool-detachment is what is sure to not be mocked in this age, why put your "real" self out there when people will just piss on the authentic gesture, snort, and look at some ironically racist cartoons or something that all the olds like to do). Texting takes uncertainties out of the communications equation. There are few surprises, when your interlocutor is not aware of your reactions (the surprise may still exist, and occur, but it becomes theoretical, it loses its power, just as those "Socratic turns" lose their literal "shaming" power when they are written down, and sit for centuries before being "interacted with", or when they are interacted with alone, without engaging in a group learning setting (it is easy to come in the next day all "Wisened", and then SHAME someone IRL, in person, the next day, by utilizing to your own advantage what you were unaware of just the day before). This is the illusion of wisdom that drives entire industries around us.
Think of the sitcoms where the one person blurts out "ILoveYou" (inappropriately?) at the end of a conversation, and then... it is awkward, well that wasn't just made up, it probably happened thousands of times... with a brain-->thumbs-->sending barrier, it is easier to blunt emotions in text, easier to filter thoughts before sending, and adds a technical layer between bare biological signaling of speaking (brain-->mouth-digitized-->ears).
Just think of all the permutations of "good-bye" that exist, later, lates, Peace, Peaceout, catchuontheflipside, sayonara, it is a nexus of social, cultural and psychological hangups (so to speak). We dress up our goodbyes all the time, and yet they are still strange experiences, that leave us, empty, and awkward.
It may all boil down to the very deeply ingrained cultural idea of having to express lamentations, towards some sinful past, "confessions" of regrets unspoken, possible last encounters, definitely the "confessions" of the past, lamenting the original sin, goodbye, and when we're gone, thing, a "Euro-tragic"/regret thing, "good-bye", rather than a very different cultural norm, seen in cultures that are not of Western European origin, perhaps like expressing the concept of "Until we again meet/greet each other next", which is far more future positive, future focused.
It might also just have something to do with Freud. Or the youngs are just all lazy.
We may well be communicationally stunted beings, but we have a great potential (reference to youngs and olds hopes to connote my ironic detachment, to avoid accusations of authenticity on the square).
posted by infinite intimation at 9:20 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
That is just to say, it might not so much be a flight from conversation, but rather a flight from the bundle of expectations of a finality, or some 'resolution' (will our last conversation be on the Facebook friends test? Was I paying enough attention? Did they say...x, or y?) to come at the end of the conversation.
posted by infinite intimation at 9:33 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by infinite intimation at 9:33 PM on April 22, 2012
I think what the article describes is a serious problem. I feel like it’s getting increasingly difficult to have serious and in-depth conversations about things. This isn’t something that’s only affecting the young. I see it with everyone including senior executives approaching retirement age.
In my workplace we’ve ended up in this crazy equilibrium where:
1. Everyone is completely snowed under e-mail
2. In meetings, executives spend most of their time answering e-mails and texting rather than paying attention to what people are discussing (or doing any serious thinking at all)
3. The lack of attention and focus during the meetings leads to misunderstandings, mistakes, and bigger problems afterwards that then result in even more e-mail
The net effect of all this is that the organization has gotten ADD. I think soon my job will consist solely of answering e-mails.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 10:36 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
In my workplace we’ve ended up in this crazy equilibrium where:
1. Everyone is completely snowed under e-mail
2. In meetings, executives spend most of their time answering e-mails and texting rather than paying attention to what people are discussing (or doing any serious thinking at all)
3. The lack of attention and focus during the meetings leads to misunderstandings, mistakes, and bigger problems afterwards that then result in even more e-mail
The net effect of all this is that the organization has gotten ADD. I think soon my job will consist solely of answering e-mails.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 10:36 PM on April 22, 2012 [4 favorites]
People are kind of annoying.
Go internet!
posted by bardic at 11:16 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
Go internet!
posted by bardic at 11:16 PM on April 22, 2012 [2 favorites]
this technology is not effecting us in any negative ways and the fact that i am using it to communicate this sentiment bears no relation. none.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:50 PM on April 22, 2012
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:50 PM on April 22, 2012
The verb is affect. What I would find really amazing these days in an urban setting is seeing two people having an intense, live conversation. Hey, i'll do this and put it on youtube.
posted by telstar at 1:42 AM on April 23, 2012
posted by telstar at 1:42 AM on April 23, 2012
When people are keeping touch by texting with people who otherwise would otherwise in fact be at a distance and really, really out of touch, I count that as a socializing plus (however important that really is).
Of course. The counterpoint is that social media can become a substitute for meeting people and replace face-to-face interaction, which can lead to greater intimacy or intellectual stimulation, with online 'social skimming'.
I don't believe that people don't converse anymore or that technology is necessarily negative since you can meet new people or keep up with people in different countries. However, it can be used for cursory communication.
posted by ersatz at 5:26 AM on April 23, 2012
Of course. The counterpoint is that social media can become a substitute for meeting people and replace face-to-face interaction, which can lead to greater intimacy or intellectual stimulation, with online 'social skimming'.
I don't believe that people don't converse anymore or that technology is necessarily negative since you can meet new people or keep up with people in different countries. However, it can be used for cursory communication.
posted by ersatz at 5:26 AM on April 23, 2012
perhaps managers should introduce conversational Thursdays.
('My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. / Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. / What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? / I never know what you are thinking. Think.')
It's interesting that the author ends her piece with
This is another hand-wringy piece for the NYT (or, rather, it's a formulaic prose poem of the ubi sunt variety). The anxieties the author describes are real, but fears that people aren't communicating, or aren't communicating deeply enough, or in the right ways are ages old.
Which isn't to say that she's wrong in every particular. Not every communicative strategy is ideally suited for every circumstance. Maybe an over-reliance on texting or emailing is counterproductive at work. Maybe some people do use their phones as a conversational crutch. Maybe you will look like a knob if you try to have an argument on Twitter. But all of these propositions are different from general laments over the absence of communication in our age.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:15 AM on April 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
('My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. / Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. / What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? / I never know what you are thinking. Think.')
It's interesting that the author ends her piece with
"I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices."because I spent a day walking beach dunes just this weekend. Like the people of not long ago, I also looked at the water, and the sky, and the sand, and talked to the people with me. And then I whipped out my phone and called my mom (who's been ill) and I talked to her, also, about how spectacular the beach dunes were.
This is another hand-wringy piece for the NYT (or, rather, it's a formulaic prose poem of the ubi sunt variety). The anxieties the author describes are real, but fears that people aren't communicating, or aren't communicating deeply enough, or in the right ways are ages old.
Which isn't to say that she's wrong in every particular. Not every communicative strategy is ideally suited for every circumstance. Maybe an over-reliance on texting or emailing is counterproductive at work. Maybe some people do use their phones as a conversational crutch. Maybe you will look like a knob if you try to have an argument on Twitter. But all of these propositions are different from general laments over the absence of communication in our age.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:15 AM on April 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
"This is why I am increasingly unhappy with Facebook and even Metafilter. I want to have in-depth conversations, but the medium isn't designed for it."
I'm confused.
When I'm on Facebook, I see fields in which you can enter text. I don't see any limit on how much text you can enter. (In fact, there is a limit. I've hit it. But it's no big deal. You can just continue typing in a comment to your post.)
Maybe the CUSTOM most people follow is to use Facebook as if it's Twitter, where you literally can't type more than 140 characters, but who is forcing people to follow this custom? How is "the medium" forcing it?
I'm one of those Aspie types who doesn't understand smalltalk. So pretty much all of my conversations are in-depth conversations. If I can't converse in depth, I see no point in talking at all. When I was younger, before the web became a major force in my life, I used to correspond with friends via snailmail, often writing 20-page letters and getting 20-page letters back. In doing this, my friends and I were part of a long tradition. People have corresponded via long letters for years.
I choose to use Facebook as a really fast kind of snailmail for long-form discussions, ones in which multiple friends can participate. I have many friends who use it the same way, and there's nothing about the medium that has placed a major impediment in our path, other than the need to press SHIFT+ENTER rather than ENTER when starting a new paragraph, which doesn't take long to master.
Once, I posted a longish response on someone's wall. It wasn't a close friend, and he berated me. He said, "I'm interested in what you have to say, but Facebook just isn't the medium for long posts." I apologized to him, and I've never posted anything like that again unless it was on my wall or a close friend's wall, but, again, I'm confused by the use of "medium." Had he said "convention," "tradition" or "norm," it would have made sense to me.
Of course, I also would have thought, "Who cares?" Facebook lets me write and read long posts, so I'll do that if I want to. If people don't want to read them, they don't have to. Luckily for me and my tastes, I have quite a few friends who are into in-depth conversation, and they are just as good at it online as off -- sometimes better.
posted by grumblebee at 10:20 AM on April 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
I'm confused.
When I'm on Facebook, I see fields in which you can enter text. I don't see any limit on how much text you can enter. (In fact, there is a limit. I've hit it. But it's no big deal. You can just continue typing in a comment to your post.)
Maybe the CUSTOM most people follow is to use Facebook as if it's Twitter, where you literally can't type more than 140 characters, but who is forcing people to follow this custom? How is "the medium" forcing it?
I'm one of those Aspie types who doesn't understand smalltalk. So pretty much all of my conversations are in-depth conversations. If I can't converse in depth, I see no point in talking at all. When I was younger, before the web became a major force in my life, I used to correspond with friends via snailmail, often writing 20-page letters and getting 20-page letters back. In doing this, my friends and I were part of a long tradition. People have corresponded via long letters for years.
I choose to use Facebook as a really fast kind of snailmail for long-form discussions, ones in which multiple friends can participate. I have many friends who use it the same way, and there's nothing about the medium that has placed a major impediment in our path, other than the need to press SHIFT+ENTER rather than ENTER when starting a new paragraph, which doesn't take long to master.
Once, I posted a longish response on someone's wall. It wasn't a close friend, and he berated me. He said, "I'm interested in what you have to say, but Facebook just isn't the medium for long posts." I apologized to him, and I've never posted anything like that again unless it was on my wall or a close friend's wall, but, again, I'm confused by the use of "medium." Had he said "convention," "tradition" or "norm," it would have made sense to me.
Of course, I also would have thought, "Who cares?" Facebook lets me write and read long posts, so I'll do that if I want to. If people don't want to read them, they don't have to. Luckily for me and my tastes, I have quite a few friends who are into in-depth conversation, and they are just as good at it online as off -- sometimes better.
posted by grumblebee at 10:20 AM on April 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
Maybe the CUSTOM most people follow is to use Facebook as if it's Twitter, where you literally can't type more than 140 characters, but who is forcing people to follow this custom? How is "the medium" forcing it?
I would say that the medium isn't just the literal form of the media. It's the way it's designed, they way it encourages people to interact using it, etc. Everything about Facebook encourages sharing large quantities of relatively small bits of data (short status updates, links, photos, etc.) While it's possible to write more (as opposed to Twitter), everything about the environment and the way Facebook is presented emphasizes writing less.
I think you can't really separate the physical capabilities and the "norms" as you put them. They're part of the same system and affect how people will use the system. Facebook is not conducive to longform discussion because it has set up an environment discouraging it.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:39 PM on April 23, 2012 [1 favorite]
I would say that the medium isn't just the literal form of the media. It's the way it's designed, they way it encourages people to interact using it, etc. Everything about Facebook encourages sharing large quantities of relatively small bits of data (short status updates, links, photos, etc.) While it's possible to write more (as opposed to Twitter), everything about the environment and the way Facebook is presented emphasizes writing less.
I think you can't really separate the physical capabilities and the "norms" as you put them. They're part of the same system and affect how people will use the system. Facebook is not conducive to longform discussion because it has set up an environment discouraging it.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:39 PM on April 23, 2012 [1 favorite]
Sorry, I hit post too soon.
I wanted to add: consider reddit. There are some limits on comment length, but as you note with Facebook, you could just continue your comment in another post.
Some people do write out long comments, but the structure of reddit strongly discourages in-depth discussion. You get far more upvotes and attention with a quick joke or meme, and so people go for that, and the threading just makes it worse as every joke or story spins off its own tree of reactions and jokes. It's extremely difficult to have a meaningful conversation on any topic unless people are absolutely committed to staying focused, despite the lack of text restrictions.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:44 PM on April 23, 2012
I wanted to add: consider reddit. There are some limits on comment length, but as you note with Facebook, you could just continue your comment in another post.
Some people do write out long comments, but the structure of reddit strongly discourages in-depth discussion. You get far more upvotes and attention with a quick joke or meme, and so people go for that, and the threading just makes it worse as every joke or story spins off its own tree of reactions and jokes. It's extremely difficult to have a meaningful conversation on any topic unless people are absolutely committed to staying focused, despite the lack of text restrictions.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:44 PM on April 23, 2012
"Facebook is not conducive to longform discussion because it has set up an environment discouraging it."
I guess I'm not seeing what they do to discourage it.
If people downvote long comments on reddit, isn't that due to reddit culture? I mean, is there anything about the technology that discourages it? Reddit is basically a message board. It could support a variety of cultures.
And I'm not sure Facebook has a culture the way reddit does, because it's not one giant public board, like reddit or metafilter. It's a large number of private fiefdoms, all running on the same infrastructure.
I would say that reddit has much more a culture of snark than metafilter, but I couldn't say whether or not Facebook is more or less snarky then reddit. WHOSE Facebook?
posted by grumblebee at 2:41 PM on April 23, 2012
I guess I'm not seeing what they do to discourage it.
If people downvote long comments on reddit, isn't that due to reddit culture? I mean, is there anything about the technology that discourages it? Reddit is basically a message board. It could support a variety of cultures.
And I'm not sure Facebook has a culture the way reddit does, because it's not one giant public board, like reddit or metafilter. It's a large number of private fiefdoms, all running on the same infrastructure.
I would say that reddit has much more a culture of snark than metafilter, but I couldn't say whether or not Facebook is more or less snarky then reddit. WHOSE Facebook?
posted by grumblebee at 2:41 PM on April 23, 2012
Ultimately, I'm asking a chicken/egg question. Is Facebook really changing the way people communicate, or is it reflecting the way they communicate? I'm sure it's doing both, but is it doing one more than the other?
I'm an old fart with a bunch of old fart friends. We all love longform writing, and we find Facebook allows us to do it. So we are find with using Facebook. I wonder if some of the "kids" who use it for shorter posts are doing that because Facebook is urging them to or because that's just the way they write, and Facebook allows them to do it.
posted by grumblebee at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2012
I'm an old fart with a bunch of old fart friends. We all love longform writing, and we find Facebook allows us to do it. So we are find with using Facebook. I wonder if some of the "kids" who use it for shorter posts are doing that because Facebook is urging them to or because that's just the way they write, and Facebook allows them to do it.
posted by grumblebee at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2012
I just don't agree with this article at all. The author says face-to-face communication teaches "patience" and "skills of self-reflection" and helps us to "understand one another better" and to "tend to each other" while being forced to "see things from the other person's point of view" but those are all things that can happen through text.
Face to face conversation teaches the ability to have a face to face communication. Of course that's an important thing to know how to do, but it's not the only kind of deep communication that exists. When the author says "We can attend to tone and nuance" this is, for me, something that undercuts her arguments about depth: lots of face-to-face conversations are about nothing else but attending to tone and nuance.
She almost admits this when she talks about the older woman (with dementia?) at the elderly-care facility who just wanted to talk to something that looked like it was listening. This woman, considering she is elderly, obviously didn't grow up with the technology the author claims is causing us to become shallower communicators, so how does this anecdote fit into the author's tech-ambivalence at all? Possibly the point is that the (non-robot) relatives she would have talked to in the past are now off having more-fun conversations on their phones; but in that case she should have said so rather than blaming the technology. Really, this article is a mess.
The only point I might agree with is that always being about to escape from the present into a safer and more controlled reality could be harmful. (Though "the ability to choose where to focus our attention" is actually the most important skill anyone can have today? - Considering we are living in a world where a small number of employed people are expected to be continuously productive self-managers and anyone who doesn't make the attention-shifting grade is locked out a stable work with long-term career prospects). Certainly we can escape lots of bad or unpleasant experiences that we might have had to suffer through and learn from in the past. But on the other hand, sometimes all bad experiences teach you is how to suffer???
Finally, I don't think that conversational skills are disappearing as quickly from the entire population as the author suggests. The MIT undergrads the author teaches =/= the population as a whole.
posted by subdee at 2:58 PM on April 23, 2012
Face to face conversation teaches the ability to have a face to face communication. Of course that's an important thing to know how to do, but it's not the only kind of deep communication that exists. When the author says "We can attend to tone and nuance" this is, for me, something that undercuts her arguments about depth: lots of face-to-face conversations are about nothing else but attending to tone and nuance.
She almost admits this when she talks about the older woman (with dementia?) at the elderly-care facility who just wanted to talk to something that looked like it was listening. This woman, considering she is elderly, obviously didn't grow up with the technology the author claims is causing us to become shallower communicators, so how does this anecdote fit into the author's tech-ambivalence at all? Possibly the point is that the (non-robot) relatives she would have talked to in the past are now off having more-fun conversations on their phones; but in that case she should have said so rather than blaming the technology. Really, this article is a mess.
The only point I might agree with is that always being about to escape from the present into a safer and more controlled reality could be harmful. (Though "the ability to choose where to focus our attention" is actually the most important skill anyone can have today? - Considering we are living in a world where a small number of employed people are expected to be continuously productive self-managers and anyone who doesn't make the attention-shifting grade is locked out a stable work with long-term career prospects). Certainly we can escape lots of bad or unpleasant experiences that we might have had to suffer through and learn from in the past. But on the other hand, sometimes all bad experiences teach you is how to suffer???
Finally, I don't think that conversational skills are disappearing as quickly from the entire population as the author suggests. The MIT undergrads the author teaches =/= the population as a whole.
posted by subdee at 2:58 PM on April 23, 2012
Now if you said there are whole realms of experience - of poor people, of elderly people, of people from other less-connected cultures, of your middle-class neighbors who for whatever reason don't have a computer at home - that are absent from the "connected" world, I'd agree.
Texting is a bad example of shallowness though. I don't know about you guys, but I text people I already know pretty well already? It's not a replacement for getting to know people, it's a way to keep in touch without interrupting what the other person is doing. And it's cheaper than making a phone call.
posted by subdee at 3:08 PM on April 23, 2012
Texting is a bad example of shallowness though. I don't know about you guys, but I text people I already know pretty well already? It's not a replacement for getting to know people, it's a way to keep in touch without interrupting what the other person is doing. And it's cheaper than making a phone call.
posted by subdee at 3:08 PM on April 23, 2012
grumblebee: ""Facebook is not conducive to longform discussion because it has set up an environment discouraging it."
I guess I'm not seeing what they do to discourage it. "
Well, every time you hit the 'enter' key, your half-formed, incomplete rantings get sent into the void, for one. I can't see any reason to do this unless it is to discourage longer thoughts being posted coherently. The size of the text box, the lack of formatting options, the general layout are all (in my opinion) designed to encourage short 'brain-farts' over well composed, thoughtful dialogue. That's fine - Facebook is not intended for D&M stuff, it's intended to connect people and have them browsing around as quickly as possible, landing on as many new pages as possible to generate greater ad views. Also fine - not every forum should have to support thoughtful conversations and not every user has to use the forum as intended.
MetaFilter, though, seems almost designed for longer, thoughtful and well-considered discussion. Lack of threading means there is only one conversation happening. Simple, text-based layout means the conversation is the dominant item on the page. The culture of the community is such that members who post high-quality content are respected, so there's incentive to do so (unless, like me, this is as good as it gets content-wise and the culture also welcomes those of us without the ability to create awe-inspiring prose). Those in-depth conversations happen, undoubtedly. But they almost always fade away very quickly, disappearing with a whimper as soon as something else comes along.
I don't see this as a cause or part of the problem, but I think it's a symptom of the pressure we are all under to communicate, damn it! and we've gone for quantity over quality. Where we could be engaged in one or two or three fantastic conversations that span long periods, we've chosen the path of having multitudes of short conversations simultaneously and we can't really put all of our attention to any of them because it's so hard to keep up. The comment by Jasper Friendly Bear about how pervasive e-mail has become in the workplace really struck a chord with me - I get 40-50 e-mails at work every day, of which about 30 need a reply. Many of those are from people who work on the same floor of the same building, but speaking to them face-to-face or even on the phone is hard because they're too busy choking on their own firehose of e-mail. I like the concept of having a day where we can't use e-mail but I can't really see it happening because our organisations have become so dependent that they can't function properly without them. Ironically, it would be almost impossible to arrange to meet with anyone here face-to-face if we didn't have access to e-mail ;-)
posted by dg at 3:10 PM on April 23, 2012
I guess I'm not seeing what they do to discourage it. "
Well, every time you hit the 'enter' key, your half-formed, incomplete rantings get sent into the void, for one. I can't see any reason to do this unless it is to discourage longer thoughts being posted coherently. The size of the text box, the lack of formatting options, the general layout are all (in my opinion) designed to encourage short 'brain-farts' over well composed, thoughtful dialogue. That's fine - Facebook is not intended for D&M stuff, it's intended to connect people and have them browsing around as quickly as possible, landing on as many new pages as possible to generate greater ad views. Also fine - not every forum should have to support thoughtful conversations and not every user has to use the forum as intended.
MetaFilter, though, seems almost designed for longer, thoughtful and well-considered discussion. Lack of threading means there is only one conversation happening. Simple, text-based layout means the conversation is the dominant item on the page. The culture of the community is such that members who post high-quality content are respected, so there's incentive to do so (unless, like me, this is as good as it gets content-wise and the culture also welcomes those of us without the ability to create awe-inspiring prose). Those in-depth conversations happen, undoubtedly. But they almost always fade away very quickly, disappearing with a whimper as soon as something else comes along.
I don't see this as a cause or part of the problem, but I think it's a symptom of the pressure we are all under to communicate, damn it! and we've gone for quantity over quality. Where we could be engaged in one or two or three fantastic conversations that span long periods, we've chosen the path of having multitudes of short conversations simultaneously and we can't really put all of our attention to any of them because it's so hard to keep up. The comment by Jasper Friendly Bear about how pervasive e-mail has become in the workplace really struck a chord with me - I get 40-50 e-mails at work every day, of which about 30 need a reply. Many of those are from people who work on the same floor of the same building, but speaking to them face-to-face or even on the phone is hard because they're too busy choking on their own firehose of e-mail. I like the concept of having a day where we can't use e-mail but I can't really see it happening because our organisations have become so dependent that they can't function properly without them. Ironically, it would be almost impossible to arrange to meet with anyone here face-to-face if we didn't have access to e-mail ;-)
posted by dg at 3:10 PM on April 23, 2012
i'm not old-fashioned in most things - apart from nuclear proliferation and the demise of good quality watercress and the cottage loaf, i regret nothing about the past (in general - i regret my past, if your spine hurts go to the doctor!). I'm not a stickler for hardly anything. But the way people now - people you may have walked across town to meet - go 'oh, hang on' and turn to read a text or email and write a reply for fifteen minutes, not an urgent one.... if it happens regularly, you're not my friend. And young people go 'ok, see at the cinema tomorrow at 2pm' then say, when they don't turn up, 'but i sent you a text' as if whatever you merely said was, clearly, just meaningless hot air... i don't care if people say 'i'll text you sometime' and don't make an arrangement, in fact i like that, it's the way everything they say isn't binding, to the point where it isn't even meaningful. One girl said 'but i was in an exam' - a final year university exam - which she must have remembered the day before! I don't get it. End of rant. Feel free to explain this strange behaviour to me...
posted by maiamaia at 5:00 PM on April 24, 2012
posted by maiamaia at 5:00 PM on April 24, 2012
I could explain it if only I could get these damned kids off my lawn!
posted by dg at 6:42 PM on April 24, 2012
posted by dg at 6:42 PM on April 24, 2012
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