THE ART: Meaningful Conversation
"The most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life," wrote the 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne. Few things are in fact as pleasurable and fertile as engaging in good talk. Whether you're falling in love or entering into friendship, open-ended, seemingly unimportant conversations are essential to building intimacy. They are also the means by which we learn, via other people, how the world works. Talking forces us to clarify our perspectives, as well as recall our experiences: A meandering chat unlocks doors to memories long ago stored away.
STATUS: Threatened
Increasingly, most of us lack the time and the focus for this most basic of human activities. "Non-goal-oriented conversations are a great luxury now," says Daniel Menaker, author of A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation. And when we do have a spare hour or two, we often spend it in less satisfying forms of communication. Many people think nothing of checking their BlackBerrys over dinner. Such "conversing" makes one statement loud and clear: Our interlocutor isn't valuable enough to warrant our full attention.
WHAT'S AT STAKE: Empathy, Intimacy, and Knowing Our Own Minds
Looking down at a handheld device, rather than into the eyes of your conversational mate, isn't merely rude; it also sabotages the exchange of nonverbal cues that help sustain rich and meaningful attachments. "We're all facial coders," says Dan Hill, founder and president of the market research firm Sensory Logic. "Humans have more facial muscles than any other species on the planet, and we're hardwired to read all 43 of them. Half the brain is devoted to processing visuals. To not use that ability is to simply throw away precious real estate."
Reading others' faces and emotions is a key component of empathy, and some argue that the ability or willingness to empathize is on the decline. In a study conducted this year at the University of Michigan, researchers found a 40 percent drop in empathy (as measured by questions about feeling concern for the less fortunate and putting oneself in another's shoes)among college students from 1979 to 2009. A sharp plunge began around the year 2000—just as the digital era as we know it kicked into high gear.
As Stanford sociologist Clifford Nass, author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, puts it, "Face-to-face social interaction is hard. If we don't go through a period where we're forced to master the hideous process of learning how to talk with other people, we never will."
And digital communication breeds confusion. Researchers recently concluded that email communicators "hear" what they're writing based on their intention, while the emailrecipient often misses that nuance. For example, a statement meant to be sarcastic can be read as insulting.
While it's easy to point to "kids today" as the foremost abusers of good conversation, it's often today's kids who complain the most about the inability to connect, says Sherry Turkle, professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT and author of the forthcoming book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. "Over and over in my interviews, I hear teens talking about not getting 'full attention' from others," Turkle says. "What they are nostalgic for is not a technology but a person who was there, just for you."
VERDICT: We Can't Let Meaningful Conversation Go Silently Into the Night
"It's not like it's simply nice if you can have them—conversations are necessary for creating wisdom about the self and others," says Menaker. Without conversations that take us on spontaneous journeys through ideas and opinions, we can't know what we think and we can't get into the minds of others.
THE ART: The Handwritten Letter
My 65-year-old father has taken to scanning old family correspondence and emailing me the documents. It's wonderfully disorienting to open a computer file and discover my late mother's distinctive scrawl, or a birthday doggerel mailed to me at summer camp from my adult brother at age 8. And it's surprising to remember the many varied and creative ways we used to stay in touch, whether sending cassette tapes (remember those?)or typed letters animated with quirky illustrations in the margins. Life used to be one long, paper snowfall.
STATUS: Near Extinction
These days, life feels less like a paper snowfall and more like an ice slick: everything whizzing past on a hard, shiny screen. In a recent survey commissioned by Yahoo!, 78 percent of respondents between the ages of 25 and 64 said they consider email a substitute for handwritten letters. Last year, the amount of mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service plummeted at its fastest rate ever. The handwritten letter—and all of the individuality it conveys—is going the way of the Red Panda.
WHAT'S AT STAKE: Delayed Gratification and Meaningful Processing of Information
