Dominance of Technologies in Communication: Flight from Conversation

As attested by Sherry Turkle, the difference between ‘conversation and connection’ is interactive communication or the discourse between two or more people by mutual exchange of ideas and information in a real face-to-face is conversation. While connection means the social network that links you to your social groups through various forms of media, in Turkle’s article, she stated ‘face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience when we communicate on our digital devices. We learn different habits.’ Thus, having a conversation with a diverse group of people using digital media could lead to acquiring various manners and adopting them within ourselves.

The concept of Sherry Turkle’s ‘being alone together’ is that, ‘Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to whenever we want to be.’ Although people are not conversing as much as we used to, the use of digital devices has the power to control and keep us connected despite how far we are and the distance from each other. Real-life conversations change through innovative connections in a way of socializing and communicating. Nowadays, it is accessible to be attached to every single one. However, people have been secluded in their personal space, which has resulted in a detachment between social groups, including loneliness.

The author argues the ‘flight from conversation’ can lessen the possibility of fostering self-reflection if the conversation is absent. She pointed out, ‘Self-reflection in conversation requires trust.’ On top of that, Turkle raises concerns about how people’s lives are now plugged into digital devices. The real face-to-face conversation in one’s vitality and its necessity is gradually gone. She also demonstrates how people are influenced by the growth of technology and the way humans choose to live with it. In a modern society where we often think of machines that look after us, for instance, in paragraph 15 found in Turkle’s article, ‘A high school sophomore wishes he could talk to an artificial intelligence program instead of his dad about dating; he says the A.I. would have so much more in its database.’

As technology dominates today’s world, we tend to depend and remotely believe in the power of digital media rather than focusing on each other. We are now capable of relying on its capacity due to the fact that our social lives are dramatically altered. Hence, instead of building a better way of enhancing camaraderie, with the rise of interconnection by social media and with the touch of our mobile screens, we are now losing authentic social interactions. Sherry Turkle defines ‘I share; therefore, I am’ as we are accustomed to using technology to convey our sentiments and opinions on various platforms of social media. It has had a massive impact on our daily lives, like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and such have deliberately replaced spoken communications.

Furthermore, Sherry Turkle provided suggestions for creating sacred spaces at home or ‘device-free zones’ for us to disconnect from technology and prevent being isolated, besides maintaining real face-to-face discourse and valuing the conversation with our loved ones. Turkle asserted, ‘Most of all, we need to remember ’in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts’ to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another.’ In the latter part of the author’s article, she encouraged everyone to ‘look up, look at one another and let’s start the conversation.’