The Fight for Connection

Sherry Turkle's essay "The Flight from Conversation", reprinted as Chapter 2 of our Rhetoric and Civic Life textbook, is certainly a fitting choice for a class reading. It discusses a change in how people have communicated, which is a worthy topic of discussion in a class about rhetoric; is in itself a fairly good example of using rhetoric to make a point; and calls on its readers, likely young college students, to think about a prominent aspect of their own lives.

Nevertheless, I must respectfully disagree with this essay, because it is stupid.

Our author starts the essay by calling attention to their topic, which is the same topic that has been covered by thousands of articles, cartoons, essays, books, television episodes, curses muttered in ancient tongues under the light of the full moon, and blog posts: people are using cellphones more and more often nowadays, and that's terrible. This is quickly followed by a paragraph not-so-subtly establishing the author's ethos: "Over the past 15 years, I've studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives." This could just be another way of saying "sometimes I talk to people who have used technology before", but this is only a minor nitpick; it's safe to assume that the author, a psychologist and MIT professor, knows what they are talking about, or at least thinks they do.

The author continues to describe how the use of technology has changed the interaction, or lack thereof, of people in various life situations. Oddly enough, this includes groups of students studying, and legal associates working; the author laments how these people are no longer talking to each other, instead focusing on their tasks. Apparently, the author doesn't like it when people actually do what they're supposed to be doing when they're supposed to be doing it, instead of getting distracted by idle conversation with each other. This is a recurring issues with this essay: the author does an excellent job of describing what they consider to be problems with technology's effect on communication, but rarely does the text explain how or why these problems are actually problems.

Eventually, the author finally reaches a real criticism of communication through technology: "We are tempted to think that our little 'sips' of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don't...connecting in sips doesn't work as well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another." The author effectively implies that texting, social media, and e-mail are inherently inferior to talking face-to-face, and complains that many people no longer even recognize a difference. This is just not true. I do not know of anyone who would honestly argue that "real" conversation and technological communication are exactly the same, although the rise of video chat is certainly blurring this distinction. (In fact, virtually every part of this essay falls apart when applied to video chat, which removes the barriers of being unable to recognize tone of voice and body language and reintegrates the "human" components of conversation which the author seems to hold so dearly.)

But while these methods of communication are certainly different, they are by no means inferior or superior to one another. Just look at all the blogs you and your classmates have posted: despite all being conveyed through the same textual medium, there are lots of distinctions, from writing tone to blog appearance to the subject matter itself, which gives each blog a personal, human touch. Compare this to my talking face-to-face to a sibling the other day, which included such insightful sentences as "Egg." Which one of these things do you think would be considered "conversation" by the author of this essay?

After pointing out the increasing use of technology to communicate with other people in modern life, the author attempts to extrapolate further: "As we get used to being shortchanged on conversation and to getting by with less, we seem almost willing to dispense with people altogether." The author uses, as an example, an experience in which they brought an inanimate seal-shaped robot to an elderly woman who had lost a child, and she talked about her loss to the robot. Let me repeat: the author complains about a woman who is using technology to cope with the death of her child. Wow. At least the robot can pretend to empathize, unlike the author.

The author constantly rails against technology essentially for just not being the same as ordinary conversation. What the author fails to realize is that just because technology is different does not mean that it is lesser. There are some things that may not get across as well in text as in speech, but there are also advantages to using technology. It makes it possible to talk to people who live miles away, even those on other continents, who have their own worldviews that may be totally different from those of the few people with whom it is physically possible to talk face to face. While the author might argue that these people cannot actually know you well, I can counter with many stories of online dating sites that led to solid relationships and friends who traveled around the world just to have that face-to-face conversation one time. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but so are the stories which are the author's only support for their claims. Even for people who do live close enough to talk to in person on a regular basis, technology allows these people to work around their busy lives and find the time to have new conversations and enrich the ones they already have. We can pick up information from technology, and use that to supplement face-to-face conversation; blatant lies and misinformation can be cleared up in moments. And, for people like me who are simply incapable of holding eye contact with another person for more than half a second (as you may have noticed if you've ever tried to talk to me in class), technology makes conversation possible in the first place. (Do you think you would be able to get a 1000+ word rant like this out of me by talking directly to me? If you do then you are wrong.)

What is the point of all this? It comes back to the idea of rhetoric. Some definitions of rhetoric which we came up with in class involved the act of physically speaking to people. However, as we have learned, rhetoric encompasses all manner of communication, from speeches to letters to texts to blog posts to articles published in newspapers. By denying that services such as e-mail and texting are "real conversation", the author of "The Flight from Conversation" is not just debating a strict definition; they are putting forth that any use of technology to communicate is inherently an inferior form of communication, and in this idea I believe they are wrong.

Ironically enough, the author chose to express their idea in the form of an article which was sent to a publisher, typeset in a newspaper, and subsequently copied into a book and reprinted thousands of times, which is obviously much more convenient than the author having to go to every potential reader and talk face-to-face about how they are wrong and terrible for using cellphones. And, as an example of rhetoric in this format, it's actually pretty good. There is support for the author's beliefs, and the elements of ethos, pathos, and logos are there. I have certainly exaggerated elements of both the author's position and my own. The point that the author's rhetoric is expressing is that the advance of technology and the reduced focus on physical conversation is bad and something to be feared, and while my counterpoints are not expressed with nearly the same level of good rhetoric, it is no less valid as an opinion simply because I typed it all up on a computer.

Learn all kinds of interesting historical facts!...or forget that and play games instead

I’ve never been very good at choosing my own topic for school assignments, and the Passion Blog is no exception. Maybe it’s because I rarely get passionate enough about a particular subject to visualize myself writing lengthy essays on the topic. Alternatively, I do have passions, but my ability to write about them is only a step or two above that of a bowl of tapioca which has somehow gained access to a copy of Microsoft Word. Or maybe the problem is that when I do get very passionate about one subject, I get too embarrassed about my interests and my writing in general to be able to share that passion with other people. Whatever the case, I spent most of my time on this assignment either obsessing over it without actually getting anything written, or doing unrelated things while pretending that the assignment doesn't actually exist.

There is one advantage given by having to choose a topic for a blog, an advantage which has been unavailable in other assignments in the past. This is that the blog itself can be used to talk about ideas and gauge readers’ interest in potential discussion topics. After a good deal of deliberation and running around the campus at random, I’ve picked out two potential ideas for blogs I might write. This is the part where you read those two ideas and tell me through the comments that both of them are terrible, or at least the titles are. (The titles can be changed later, so don’t worry too much about those.)

Signs of the Past

If you’ve wandered around the Penn State campus enough, you’ve probably noticed some of the signs put up by the Penn State Alumni Association which detail historical facts about the campus. Of course, there’s also a good chance that you haven’t actually noticed these signs, or at least not taken the chance to read them. Only a nerd with an odd interest in random historical facts and too much time on their hands would actually take the time to look at as many as possible, and even look further into the history surrounding these signs and what they commemorate. Fortunately, I happen to be a nerd with an odd interest in random historical facts and too much time on their hands, so if this blog option is chosen, I may do just that. If by chance I can’t find a sign or there's not a lot of information, there’s surely other odd history around Penn State just waiting to be researched and discovered.

Free Game Friday (These blogs are to be updated on Fridays, after all.)

Video games are a thing which I like to do in my spare time (if you don't believe me, check my first post), and I know that a lot of other people seem to enjoy games as well. This is not likely to change during college. What has changed, however, is my budget for obtaining video games, which has gone from “not a lot” to “literally nothing”. How can I indulge myself in fun activities while ignoring my real responsibilities now? The answer to that lies in the Internet, where kind people make games on their own time and send them out into the world at no cost except time and computer disk space. Naturally, the vast majority of these games are trash, but over time I’ve formed a small collection of free games that are high-quality enough that I feel confident in recommending them to other people (you) who will enjoy them. In this blog option, I would talk about great freeware video games people have made, what makes them great, and where you, the reader, can get them to play for yourself. People might find this topic more interesting than the other...or less. It could go either way.

So, what am I actually going to blog about for the whole semester? If there seems to be a preference for one of these topics, I’ll probably go with that. Otherwise, I’ll just pick one at random. Or maybe I’ll make up a totally new one. Who knows? All that’s for sure is that my posts probably won’t get as long as this one. I needed to ramble a bit here in order to get my heading on what to do with the assignment. Sorry about that, and thank you for reading to the end despite my rambling.