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Have Smartphones Killed the Art of Conversation? (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Not quite, but it's certainly more than a blip in the cultural history of communication: in 2017, for the first time, the number of voice calls -- remember, those things you did with your actual voice on your actual phone -- fell in the UK. Meanwhile, internet addiction keeps growing, presumably because we haven't quite worked out what to do with all those hours we're saving on talking.
More than three-quarters (78%) of British adults own a smartphone, and we check them on average every 12 minutes. That adds up to 24 hours a week online via our phones -- much of that time swallowed up by modern-style chat on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with some left over for texting. It has taken a toll on talking, sure, but few smartphone users might claim to feel less connected as a result.
Now, the idea of ringing someone for "a chat" has a quaint, retro quality. I can, and will, talk you under the table, but phone calls are a luxury usually reserved for about five people: my mum, my sister, two best friends and my editor, obviously. Even then, I'm rubbish at picking up. Much is made about smartphones leading to dumber conversation -- amid claims that the art of chatter has been lost. Arguably, however, conversation has simply been rebooted and reconfigured. Take the myriad ways in which we can and do communicate now. It's a given that I will spend an embarrassing portion of my day glued to a screen (It's work!) and much of that will be chatting (again, it's work!).
More than three-quarters (78%) of British adults own a smartphone, and we check them on average every 12 minutes. That adds up to 24 hours a week online via our phones -- much of that time swallowed up by modern-style chat on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with some left over for texting. It has taken a toll on talking, sure, but few smartphone users might claim to feel less connected as a result.
Now, the idea of ringing someone for "a chat" has a quaint, retro quality. I can, and will, talk you under the table, but phone calls are a luxury usually reserved for about five people: my mum, my sister, two best friends and my editor, obviously. Even then, I'm rubbish at picking up. Much is made about smartphones leading to dumber conversation -- amid claims that the art of chatter has been lost. Arguably, however, conversation has simply been rebooted and reconfigured. Take the myriad ways in which we can and do communicate now. It's a given that I will spend an embarrassing portion of my day glued to a screen (It's work!) and much of that will be chatting (again, it's work!).
Fsck no!
And you all look like baboons.
Neanderthal Power!
I don't know, have typewriters killed the art of penmanship?
People who lose the sight of the "end" (that is, maintaining a relationship with people you love) for the "means" (particular mechanisms by which you do it) annoy me. There are harms done by smartphones, but "killing the art of conversation" isn't one of them.
Killed, not really.
They did so because the tele-conversation is economically expensive.
More than three-quarters (78%) of British adults own a smartphone, and we check them on average every 12 minutes.
I only check mine a few times a day, if that. Then again, I'm old(er) and not British.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Economics is based on what folks feel they can get out of other folks.
Technology makes people able to spend their time in a more organized, efficient manner.
In eras where a US president might take a large part of a week getting to a location, they would have a large amount of time to mull over a speech and its many implications.
Now, our president has a few minutes during his TV time to think up the equivalent speech, which he is expected to make impromptu every night.
The trick is setting expectations for your communication better, by not being so reactionary with the things you want to be important.
Sure - you are perfectly capable of making thousands of messages using modern tools, and swamping the communications landscape with every fraction of your thoughts... but then you end up sounding like those youtube personalities that are frequently breaking down and painting themselves into corners with their pronouncements or intentional nonsense.
Clicks/reads are valuable if you're a marketing specialist - but they aren't a unit of functionality for most other things.
Folks are worried about their potential in terms of attention and visibility... when there's lots of other potentials that end up mattering a lot more. Learn what matters when, and don't cut off the actual important stuff in order to live for marketing side of life.
Ryan Fenton
Even at a few seconds each that adds up over the course of the day.
I'm really glad I don't have a smartphone. The only phone with an actual SIM in it is a nokia 6310.
And despite being a serious geek in HS and college, I mean that in a pejorative sense. Only the kicker is that actual nerds can at least communicate between each and form real relationships because of shared underlying psychology and interests. You want to see a truly ugly nerdy display? Watch two people on a "date" where both are glued to their phones and not try actively trying to figure each other out. (As an aside, I have absolutely no sympathy for women do this then complain that their man is a douche/asshole/rapey/etc. How about you get the fuck off FaceBookInstagramShitterWhutzUpDoc and talk to him and figure him out instead of limiting your human contact with him to phones and fucking)
Post you Cell # and let me text the answer to you
No.
It's hard to believe it today, but many years ago /. was the most important and most influential discussion web site. Getting your web site linked to from the /. front page would often result in so much web traffic that web servers would fail under the load. The discussion here was intense. You'd often chat directly with extremely influential and important computing industry leaders. Then, because some weak-minded individuals couldn't handle real conversation, the mod system was put in place to stifle and limit the discussions here. This pacified environment drove away so many of the best leaders. After all, when you're leading technological revolutions you don't have time for petty censorship. And so we ended up with today's /., which is a sorry and bland imitation of what it once used to be. A great discussion community was crushed by censorship.
I'm tired of telling people that "irregardless" is not a word.
When people stay connected all the time to other people who are also connected all the time, they aren't connecting with some of the brightest minds in the world, they're connecting with like-minded maroons. The result is an amplifying effect where they reinforce each others poor reasoning and language skills.
The result is a bunch of poorly-socialised people who don't know how to spell "lose", use "irregardless" in every conversation and think that their opinion is more widely held than it really is.
Why the obsessive need to put your name under a post when it is already above it ?
you're not writing a physical letter and you're not important enough for us to care what your name is or who you are.
is it an ego thing ? are you deluded into thinking you're building a brand ?
What's killing phone calls is that 95% of incoming calls are robocall spam. Here in the US, many people simply don't both answering their phone anymore. The remaining 5% of callers learn to text real quick. The FCC needs to mandate that Caller-ID be secure from forgery, then bring the hammer down on robocalls with massive per-call fines, and provide an incentive for reporting by directing a portion of those fines to the reporter.
Nonetheless we don't pick up when you call us.
If you want to talk to me, you'll do it when _I_ have time ( and the inclination) and not interrupt me just because _you_ have time.
Judging from the woman with the impressively-painted nails who sat in front of me on the subway in Chicago a few weeks ago, I would have to say no. Although I do hope that she eventually learns that you can use your indoor voice when you're on your smartphone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No.
Economics is based on what folks feel they can get out of other folks
The above is both UTTER BULLSHIT and one of the saddest and most misguided things I have ever read.
You may well believe your "theory" is true, but I assure you that for people who are worth a damn, it is NOT true and not even close to true.
Good people actually care about other people and are interested in other human beings without some sort of ulterior motive or agenda which involves how those other people might be "useful".
If you actually believe that your theory represents how people "are", you are a very sick boy. Of course your repeated use of your own name is also an indication of that, because it is a blatant plea for attention from a world in which you have no friends. Perhaps if you quit dealing with other people on a "what is this person useful for to me ?" basis, other people might find you less repulsive. Does the truth hurt, son ? You know it does.
.
:-]
Chris Lukehart
I am sure that you luddites will find a new and uncreative way to use your governmental club to shut down the information flow for the sake of children or some minority that can't legally speak for itself.
People have been complaining about the art of conversation being killed by new technology since at least as far back as Plato. And yet every generation realizes that you need to converse over speech in order to get laid. Colour me skeptical that this time, it's different.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I'm a 60 something guy. From the day I figured out what a telephone was my conversations were always of the "hey Joe. Good, Good. McDonalds at 3? See ya then" sort.
What's changed is that conversation now happens via text messages, the only phone calls I get are scammers.
I started calling over Signal, the moment I noticed the vastly better audio quality! And of course it is properly encrypted!
The people I talk to over Signal are normal people.
I can't speak for the UK, but there are plenty of other ways to talk to a person (via voice) than making a phone call.
Did they count FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, and all the other video chat apps? I see plenty of people using those. Heck, I was chuckling the other night when I went to the local Vietnamese Street Fair and found plenty of people using their phones to video chat and show off the street fair with friends who lived elsewhere.
I don't know the cost in the UK, but if I have an unlimited (or even "unlimited") data plan, I'd probably be better off using that than whatever minutes that the phone company gives me.
Linguists are tired of telling Nazis, that a word is ONLY defined by the speaker and listener understanding what was meant! And that dictionaries do not define what is a word and what not, but only record an outdated incomplete state!
E.g.:
1. "Quizcazol" means when you are being a very annoying moron because of your cluelessness to confidence ratio.
2. You are quizcazol.
3. You understood me. So congratulations, for you and me, quizcazol *is* a word now!
I have several books on the history of letters. In the days before phones and even telegraphs, statesman and scientists and poets and lovers shared their thoughts via letter. For sailors and travelers, there could be months and even years between visits. Letters were crafted and composed and thought over. They were read and reread and cherished. It was a different mindset to communication and for better or worse, it is one we have lost.
If you go to a pub, you can see lots of people sitting by them self on their phone. Myself, I do that also sometimes. But I have lived in enough different areas, that I have no problem talking to strangers. When I am talking to people, my phone is put down and I do not continue. Other times, the phone contributes to conversation. Sports talk, stats. Current events. Just saying, depends on the situation and the person.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Thanks to Australia's eavesdropping and metadata retention laws, I only call someone across the phone network if I have to and they're not on Facetime or Signal. Thus my calling will appear to have been drastically reduced.
I'd like to paint a graph here, maybe one day, slashdot?
With the invention of technology, things become possible that were not before, and things become easier. People certainly wrote less when it meant putting chisel and hammer to stone. They certainly wrote more when clay tablets were invented, and more still with modern writing tools (papyrus I'll leave open to discussion).
Then there is a tipping point. At some point, technology becomes too convenient and too fast and depth is lost. Certainly when meeting someone meant travelling for days, you would make the most of that meeting. Now if you forgot something you can just recall. So there is less incentive to be thorough, but also less need.
However, a certain amount of depth is necessary to get to anything meaningful. A meme is not a philosophical discourse. Aphorisms have their place and always had, but they should be the result of a long, in-depth discussion.
This is not smartphone-specific. In management today, thin-slicing, the bullshit-bingo term for cutting through the crap, getting to the core of the problem fast, is one of the most vital skills. But you can not spend your entire day thin-slicing. Some problems actually are complicated and require taking into account all the small details. Knowing when to use thin-slicing and when to sit down and do a proper analysis is what differentiates good managers from great managers.
The same with conversations. There are many moments were a short back-and-forth on the phone or in text does the job. When you are just reconnecting with someone, you don't need the full details of their day. "What's up?" is exactly the level of conversation needed. But if someone needs a life advice, or when a serious relationship needs saving, or a mourning friend needs a shoulder, cutting to the core quick and applying a band-aid doesn't do it, and you still need that skill of long, deep conversation. In person, by voice or by text doesn't matter.
Smartphones, and that is their downside compared to other technology, don't really allow for that, they are designed for the short, fast interaction. I cannot imagine writing even this comment on a phone, much less a deep-meaning letter. Even for voice communication, for some reason, looking back, I've had longer conversations on landline phones than on mobile phones, despite the convenience factor that would suggest the opposite. There just is something in the technology that gently guides it toward the shallow, quick, the way post-it notes or index cards make you write shorter notes than a full-size notebook, even if you have enough of them that a novel would fit before you run out.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's no surprise that people don't want to talk anymore when the quality of voice calls has degraded so much from over-compression, delays, echo, random blanks, scritches, etc... I mean, most of my conversations consist in "Hello, hello, hello, can you hear me ? I can hear you... now I can't hear you... can you repeat that... again... beeeeeeep"
Voice calls are horrendous and you can tell the conversation goes through hundreds of conversions, codec changes, A/D and D/A conversions along the way.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You
And why are you wasting our time with your non notable uninteresting thoughts that you banged out on your keyboard?
August 06, 2018
Anonymous Coward
LOL. No.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No, Millennials killed the art of conversation, like they killed everything else that was good about their parent's generation!
Sure has.
Example 1: I saw a couple waiting for the Metro, sitting on a stone bench, she was leaning on him... and both were oblivious to anything but their phones.
Example 2: my son tells me for thirtysomethings and younger, if you go somewhere, and you see someone you'd like to meet/talk to, you can't: you have to pull out your phone, pull up tinder, set it to super local, and scroll through to see if you can find them....
Freakin' addicts. At least junkies go off in a private corner....