#155： Reclaiming Conversation
Episode Stats
Summary
Sherry Turkle is a professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT in Massachusetts, and her latest book is reclaiming conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. In this episode, we discuss what we miss out when we don't engage in face-to-face conversation and what we can do to reclaim it.
Transcript
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we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so
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more and more today we are communicating with the people in our lives via screens might be your
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desktop with email or instant message or it might be on your smartphone with text messaging or
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twitter or facebook and while there have been some great benefits of this advance in communication
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technology efficient etc etc there are some drawbacks that have come with the decline in
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face-to-face conversation my guest today on the podcast has written a book making the case what
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we're missing out by not engaging face-to-face talk and open into conversation her name is sherry
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turkle she's a professor of the social studies of science and technology at mit in massachusetts
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and her latest book is reclaiming conversation the power of talk in a digital age and today on
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the podcast we discuss what we miss out whenever we don't engage in face-to-face conversation and
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what we can do to reclaim conversation in our own lives with the people around us great podcast with
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a lot of great tips that you can actually implement today in your life to bring back open into
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conversation so without further ado sherry turkle reclaiming conversation
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all right sherry turkle welcome to the show my pleasure uh so your latest book is reclaiming
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conversation um and you've written about how technology and communication and humanity uh intersects
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uh because you're a professor of social sciences and technology at mit um and i'm curious you know
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you've you've warned about the ill effects that technology can have in our lives in your work
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um have you always had a wary eye towards technology or was there a time in your career where
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like most people thought that things like the internet texting email could improve communication
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make society better well i still think that the that the internet and um can make society better
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and i think it does in many ways make society better um but i um i think that we have to
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use it in ways that um will make sure that happens and just you know be more discriminating because i
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think we use it in some ways they're making our our lot worse but there was a time when i you know
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was less aware i think of the as we all were of what the uh problematic uh the problematic issues were
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so i think i was more sort of generally enthusiastic um and that was really when you know when things
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began you know i would say up to the mid 90s when the the part of the internet i focused on was how
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it allowed us to play with issues of identity and that was very exciting and um i still i still think
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that that's a very um thrilling part of the internet uh we've seen the dark side of that
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we've seen that people when they're anonymous online can become very cruel um but it certainly
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is the case you know that anonymity is not just uh doesn't just allow you to play with identity it
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allows you to feel no accountability and that's you know that's something that we've all learned
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again with practice you know in this medium but um i would say that through the 90s i was i was more
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an enthusiast uh than a critic and um then in terms of my own biography my own intellectual biography i met
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two technologies that that sort of took me aback and made me um you know more critical and those were
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sociable robotics robots that pretend to have empathy robots that say they love you care
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about you um that pretend they have a relationship with you i think this has some very toxic effects
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and um and also um i began to see the downside of what i call always on always on you technology
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you know something like our phones where because they're always on us always on our bodies we tend
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to turn away from the people we're with uh and turn towards our phones and so i became more focused
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on looking at these two technologies and you know kind of taking the measure of the problems that they
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are causing us and what led you to conversation so i think all of us intuitively understand that
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we're not very good at having conversations but what led you down this path to look at how technology
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has affected the way we interact face to face and having conversations
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well the what sociable robotics and always on technology have in common is that they take us away
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from conversations that count if you give your child a hello barbie which is a robot doll that says
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hello i love you talk to me about your sister i have a sister i'm jealous of my sister do you have
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you know pretend to want to have a conversation with you about your sister you're not talking to your
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child about her feelings and therefore cutting off a conversation that might lead to really the
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develop of empathy the development development of relationship in a way that talking to a robot doll
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is never going to do and similarly if you put a phone down on a table between two people who are having a
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meal research shows that the empathy between those two people literally the connection they feel toward
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each other will go way down and the things they will talk about will become more trivial because it sort of
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makes sense we we don't want to share um much of ourselves if we feel we're uh going to be interrupted
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so not only do we talk about things that are more trivial but we also um but we also uh feel less
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connection with the people we're with and neither of these things are good neither of these things are good
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i guess you also talked about how um there's research showing out showing now that young people
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are becoming less and less empathetic and that might be because of smartphones and internet communication
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yes there's a 40 percent decline in the um in every way we know how to um judge empathy
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among college students in the past 20 years with the greatest decline being in the past 10 years
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and we have every reason to think that's because of um smartphones but you know it it makes sense
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because we're you know empathy is born in the conversations in the conversations where you
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look somebody in the eye and you you know you you sense their body you sense their um
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you know you sense their their their pauses their stops their starts i mean you're really
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you know you're really paying attention uh to them and you know that's not going to happen
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if you interrupt that conversation to go to your phone and it turns out that 89 percent of americans
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say in in the most recent study that um in in their last conversation they they took out a phone
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i mean they literally say you know my last social interaction i took out a phone and 82 percent say
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that it deteriorated the conversation so this is something that we we know we know that we're doing
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to each other we know is not good for it's not it's not good for our conversations but we're doing it
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anyway but we don't have to in other words i'm very optimistic because it turns out that in only um five days
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at a summer camp um without phones those empathy numbers come right back up um and uh we can reclaim
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conversation and reclaim empathy and reclaim the kind of the kinds of relationships that that we
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deserve to have with each other so it sounds like empathy is a lot like a muscle right you use it or lose
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absolutely absolutely empathy is what we're pre-wired for in other words the muscle is there
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you know to be used it's it's a design to grow but if you don't use it you you won't have it um
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it's like an apology when you apologize to someone um you know so much work is done so much work is done
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you get to say um i'm sorry you get to see um uh you get to see the other person feeling sad and hurt
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but they get to see you being sorry then they feel compassionate and then you see that there's an
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opening because they feel compassionate so that you can use that opening to to make a space for
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something new to happen it's really fantastic i mean it's really fantastic um and um uh it's it's
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really uh uh fantastic all of the um uh all the things that can happen in in an apology um but that
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can't happen online right or a text message no um it can't it can't yeah unfortunately it can't
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but yeah i think you know there's i'm sure there's people out there and you probably heard these
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counter-arguments that saying oh well you know we're over romanticizing conversation you know we
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forget about the awkward silences and the angry outburst and the tediousness of you know asking
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well what do you think of the weather today you know small talk you know and technology eliminates
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that right with apps like tinder uh people no longer have to figure out uh can i is this person
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is can i make the transition from just being friends to your romance because everyone on tinder is
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already there for romance you don't have to worry about small talk you've got to swipe uh text
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messaging eliminates uh you can answer when you're ready to answer but well but see all of this i mean
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my you know i want to be in conversation um i want to be in conversation with these people
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because they have something wrong and it reminds me of my students who don't want to come to office
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hours but who want to send me an email asking me the perfect question so i can send them the perfect
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answer back they're they're turning what should be a rich conversation into a transaction they're
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forgetting that that what's supposed to happen between a professor and a student is is not that
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they're going to ask me the perfect question i'm going to give them the perfect answer but that um
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but then on the contrary they're going to give me the imperfect
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idea and i'm going to say hey um that's not a great idea but i'm going to stick with you and talk
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with you and we're going to have a relationship and we're going to make this better yeah so it seems
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like we and that's what that's what they're missing that's what they're missing is they're missing that
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um that these conversations that they're calling small talk um you know um they're these are the
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what these these are the non-transactional conversations where you build a relationship get to know about
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another person um uh you know get to understand how somebody else thinks um that's the business
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of conversation it's not it's not it's not an algorithm and i i think that i'm arguing for
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um you know the work that conversation can do that is not the work of an algorithm
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and you know tinder is an algorithm yeah um you know and and i'm not saying that it doesn't get two
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people together to meet but once you meet um you better be ready to talk if you want to have a
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um you know a conversation i mean it seems like um the the friction that happens in conversation
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opens up i guess spontaneity that's something i feel all of us want control over everything
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aspects of our life and with conversations sometimes you can't control that
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um and it feels scary uh but at the same time it opens up new opportunities because you might go
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somewhere you didn't think you were going to go before yeah i think that a lot of um a lot of what
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people are afraid now about is spontaneity i mean i talked to one young man about conversation and why
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he would do anything to sort of avoid it and he said i said what's wrong with conversation he said
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conversation i'll tell you what's wrong with conversation it takes place in real time
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and i can't you can't control what you're going to say it takes place in real time and you can't
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control what you're going to say um uh and he was so right and yet that's not a bad thing that's a good
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thing and yet he was seeing that as a bad thing and i think that our phones make us i sometimes
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say they make us three gifts as though they were gifts from genies you know kind of powerful
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benevolent genie but who sort of didn't understand much about people and what they really need
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which is that you know we we never have to be alone we can put our attention wherever we want
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it to be we never have to be bored uh you know and and and we never really have to deal with
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our vulnerability and actually those things even though they feel so seductive they're really not
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that great for us to live like that and i think that's kind of the challenge is that we're offered
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possibilities that really aren't that great for us and that's what we're struggling with now it seems
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uh i think you made this analogy in your book too too is it's sort of like uh nutrition uh was maybe
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10 years ago like we all love fast food it's delicious because it has that fat and we're primed
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evolutionary you know because of evolution to seek that out but we have an overabundance of it now and
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consequently we we've gotten obese because of it as a society is it the same thing with information
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like we we feel drawn to having these sort of sips of conversation via text and email
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um but in the end it's not very good for us yes and also the analogy to fast food actually gives me
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um is interesting because it also gives me a little hope paradoxically because um you know i was raised
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by a mother who thought that you know giving the best nutrition to her precious little sherry was you
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you know white bread and i remember it had these balloons on it and each balloon stood for a
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different vitamin that was injected into this somehow and it had um i had like soup that mostly tasted of
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sugar and salt those were its main flavor i'd you know it had some tomato flavoring i think but i think
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it was mostly sugar and salt and then i had um a fruit in a sort of base of sugary syrup i mean i i
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really this was if i i had a a daughter and if i had fed her these foods i i would have you know the
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only excuse would have been that i was doing like a madman retrospective or something i mean you know
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i would have been like considered an abusive mother so gradually you know we you know that was industry
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telling americans you know what it wanted us to eat to to feed a kind of new industrial model of
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of what of what have how they were stocking um supermarket shelves um and americans you know in
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this culture gradually and it's not completely it hasn't completely changed yet but gradually people
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said you know what i don't think so i actually don't think so i don't think i want to eat like this
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this really doesn't feel um this doesn't feel so good i don't um this isn't feeling good to me
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um and and gradually people change their food habits so um i i think that we are at a moment
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when we are actually ready to change our um our phone habits because so many people that i
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interviewed were not happy campers you know it's not as though you know people criticize my work and
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say oh my gosh doesn't appreciate how much we know from the internet i really do and i want to continue
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using all that great stuff that it gives us but we use it in some ways that really are making people
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quite um unhappy with their lives like i i'm thinking of this one father who i interviewed who
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who um who talked about giving his older daughter a bath when she was a younger girl you know when she
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was a toddler now she's 11 and now he has a two-year-old and he doesn't when he gives her a bath he just
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leaves her in the bathtub and he sits on the toilet bowl with the seat down he does his mail on his
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iphone he doesn't even talk to her and he says this is terrible those conversations i used to have
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with my older daughter those were the best that was incredible that was the most you know those were
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the most that was the best and it wasn't just that he liked them but i mean as a psychologist i know
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that he was that's where you teach empathy you know that's how it's done that's how you teach
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you know a kind of continuity of of parental care and how to have a conversation and not to be afraid
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of a spontaneous conversation intimacy that's where all that work is done and and now he just
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he's miserable and his daughter isn't getting what she needs to get so um uh you know he's not happy
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and um and so i think that people are really ready for a change i mean that's that's the bottom line
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yeah you know and and i think that even younger people you know people who are particularly like
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14 13 14 15 year olds whose parents you know were texting at breakfast and dinner whose whose dads never
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took them for a walk to the corner store without bringing their phones you know these are kids who
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are ready for a change these are kids who are ready for a change yeah i thought that was interesting
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the interviews you did with the younger people like they were the ones who were instigating like
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they're telling their parents like get off your phone you know we're at dinner yes that was so
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bizarre you usually think it's the other way around no i you know i think that that's a misperception
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because you know we think so many people say to me well how do they know to do that
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because they never knew anything different and this this is on this model that somehow
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you know young people need to be taught that uh it would be a good thing for their parents to talk
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to them so that's like the model that they've never had it so how are they going to know
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that it would be a good thing for their parents to talk to them and i can see why you know we get into
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that um way of thinking it's like you know it should be a cognitive learning that your parents
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should talk to you but it turns out that kids really just want their parents attention and and they
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seem to know and crave it um without no in a culture where they don't have it so i can just report that
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from the front lines that that this that this desire seems to pop up um even without um even when
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parents don't give it uh children seem to want it or on the playground you know um parents sit there
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with what one of my big advice points to parents is that if you cannot if you simply cannot um spend
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you know spend three hours on the playground with your kid paying attention to them because you have
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too much to work to do on your phone don't go to the playground for three hours you know stay home
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that's okay and go go to the playground for um a half hour but what's terrible i mean what's awful
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is is is parents who are um who are um who are um who are who are who are who are going to the
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playground and with their children sort of begging them to to pay attention to them and these kids are
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like being ignored so stay home do your work and keep your phone at home we go to the playground so
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when you're there you can pay attention to your kid it's the same thing at you know with at school
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games you see you see the parents who have gone to the school game you know or they've gone to the
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school game and um but they go to a school game and then at the game they're they're texting um
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and it's it's bad yeah uh they're there but they're not there they're there but they're not there
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and kids realize it and they're quite you know they're quite upset yeah well i think most people
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have a tendency to think of conversation as part of you know our personal lives and that yeah we
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should make more take more measures to ensure that we have more of these face-to-face moments with our
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family and our friends but you make this interesting case um in your book that we need to do this in
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business as well um why how how is it that face-to-face conversations can improve business
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productivity and profitability because most people think well you know this sort of the cooler talk
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and things like that that's just a waste of time it should be on the computers getting stuff done
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but how can these face-to-face spontaneous conversations at the office help us be do better
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work well the it's great you ask that because dramatically dramatic new research has shown
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that face-to-face conversation is good for the bottom line it increases productivity it increases
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creativity and collaboration and it uh it companies that make room for it make more money
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so the work of ben veber who's a colleague of mine he he began at mit and now he has his own
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company but he what he did was he actually put badges i mean sort of electronic interactive highly
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interactive badges on people sensing badges that sensed you know if they were having conversation
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what kind of conversation who they were having conversation with um and um and he found that that
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that those workers who talked more to their co-workers um were more productive groups of workers who
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talked together were more productive giving workers a coffee break at the same time increases the
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productivity of that whole group um and one of the least productive things you can do it turns out
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is the thing that makes you feel more productive which is going into your office putting on your
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headphones or going into your cubicle putting on your headphones um laying out your one or two
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phones um and you know opening up your screen with all its windows and you know starting in on those emails
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uh one um one lawyer um who i spoke to called that the pilot in the cockpit you know so the lawyers who do
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that are the pilots in the cockpit they're not working with their colleagues they're not they're not
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really getting done what needs to get done in the firm which is working together um talking to clients
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they these people tend to avoid client meetings and prefer to send emails and that is not how
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relationships form it's not how really the work of the firm gets done they don't go to the they don't
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go to the uh lunchroom to talk to their colleagues they they stay in their office they don't go to
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meetings with senior lawyers you know to to listen to conference calls to see how senior lawyers conduct
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negotiations they they listen to those calls on speaker from their office so that they can multitask
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and continue to work on their email it's a very common pattern and we we think that we're being
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smart when we do that and actually we are taking ourselves out of the mainstream of what will make us
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successful which is relationships knowing how to talk to people knowing how to close a deal
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knowing how to be sensitive to other people and and and understand them um it reduces that spontaneity
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again right again again and and and this you know the most successful people are not people who are
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dedicated to emptying out their inbox they don't care about their inbox they care about what they're
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doing proactively what they're writing what they're thinking and the transactional and and you know
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and sort of um responsive reactive things that they can do with their inbox um you know once a day
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once every two a days once a week you know they'll put in some time they're not irresponsible but but
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you know my favorite tip to um to people who want to be really productive at work is to send out
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messages that say i'm thinking and see watch those messages watch people go crazy and watch those
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messages go viral now it depends of course at what level you are in an organization i mean you know you
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can't you can't make this conversation revolution if you're just starting out you have to begin to
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enlist um other people to argue with you that you will be more creative and you know you have to
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work in a firm where you can work on changing the culture of the firm but i think that there's more
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uh support for this than than than many people think because firms are realizing i mean i went to one firm
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where you know that had studied you know the right size of the table in the cafeteria so that people
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would um you know would sit together and talk you know the right how long a wait there should be on
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the um on the line you know in the cafeteria so that people would chat but wouldn't feel that the
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line was too long you know everything for conversation in other words they had read
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ben veber's research they knew um how important conversation was and yet they also demanded
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that people that the highest value really was being always on the company messaging system
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and if you didn't respond to a message within i don't know 15 20 minutes a half hour somehow you
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weren't showing devotion and you can't have it both ways and that company you know is starting to
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you know there's a lot of pressure there to to turn things around and to you know if they're going to
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talk the talk they have to walk the walk you you know conversation really has to be a way of life
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within the culture of the company it can't be slogans or cappuccino machines or micro kitchens it
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really has to be how you run your business yeah i thought it was interesting too how uh ceos are
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starting to implement basically like social skills classes for their newer uh and newer recruits
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because these young people coming out of college they just they have no they want to do
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everything by email or text messaging yes that is very common yeah it's very common to have um
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to have ceos saying you know i mean several ceos that said that you know they spend what they consider
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an unconscionable amount of time on um social i mean they don't even know how to put it kind of social
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uh social uh social skills training uh you know just kind of getting people um into uh um you know
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getting people to um be together and um um you know hang out with each other and apologize to each other
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instead of sending each other crazy emails yeah constantly yeah i've had those what they were
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doing yeah i've had those exchanges i mean i work from home um and so a lot of people i work with are
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it's remote and i guess that's another problem right uh more and more companies have uh decided to do this
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whole remote working things it makes it more productive it saves money uh but in the process like
00:31:34.800
it sucks up my time i've had email exchanges like a chain of emails i was 60 emails back and forth
00:31:40.000
when like a simple phone call could have gotten the problem solved in five minutes but like people
00:31:46.240
no one ever thinks oh let's just get on the phone it's just let's just keep doing email because this
00:31:50.220
is comfortable yes um i thought this interesting so you make this point that besides making us less
00:31:56.860
empathetic our technology and i'm not just talking about smartphones i'm talking about the services that
00:32:01.420
we use to communicate so facebook instagram all that snapchat um it changes the way we present
00:32:09.900
ourselves to the world um we sort of self-censor and but why is that and some people say why is that
00:32:17.140
so bad i mean shouldn't we you know self-reflect before we self-reveal um things to to other people
00:32:23.700
or but but why is that bad if it is bad well you know everything in its place i mean you know i think
00:32:30.180
this is an example where you want to you want to sort of step back and take a deep breath and say
00:32:36.820
it's a matter of degree um i'm presenting myself here to lots of people um there's a degree of natural
00:32:47.760
editing um so it's natural that i self-reflect before i self-reveal too much and that's good
00:32:59.260
um if i'm on facebook and i'm presenting myself to a public it's natural and good that i self-reflect
00:33:18.700
before i self-reveal the problem is that we've gotten into thinking and people do that they present
00:33:28.120
their you know the best meal you know the best meal they don't they don't you know they have
00:33:34.080
lunch at mcdonald's with a you know with a with a greasy with with really greasy fries it looks
00:33:42.040
great on instagram yeah i mean you know the whole thing and then but then for dinner they go to you
00:33:47.080
know something really elegant and they're taking pictures that elegant thing and you know they
00:33:51.520
they're at some sort of you know hotel hotel nothing but then you know when when they do
00:33:59.660
something special all of a sudden they're at this you know fancy hotel i mean in other words you you
00:34:04.280
present a sort of souped up version of your life you know part of my author tour is very elegant
00:34:10.520
and really nice and then i mean really part of it is like you know really terrible
00:34:17.620
and you know if i was if i was on facebook you know telling my followers about my tour i i you know
00:34:27.120
i don't think it's a two o'clock in the morning kind of dragging myself through through places they're
00:34:34.200
kind of grungy that i you know would really feature i want to look glamorous i wish i would do the one
00:34:39.280
where you know the hairdresser and the makeup artist are leaving a hotel you know and i'm about
00:34:45.900
to be interviewed by you know somebody awesome you know that's that's more what i would post but we
00:34:51.460
all do this and that's fine that's fine if we remember that facebook is a public place where we're
00:35:00.020
presenting a public self where we want to be or you know a kind of um polished up version of us
00:35:07.480
um that's not but that's not how we start to talk about it we start to talk about it like this is
00:35:18.180
where we have our friends this is the place for our social life we're gonna you know this is this is
00:35:25.080
our this is where i talk to my besties um and we start to look at that profile as though it really
00:35:31.900
matters that this is somehow where significant social encounters are happening not your pr campaign
00:35:40.820
in other words we're chatting as part of my you know publicity from my book and trying to get i
00:35:48.080
really believe in this conversation i want to start a movement for conversation i think that
00:35:52.880
childhood and work and medicine and law i mean politics need conversation i mean i'm gonna i'm
00:35:59.980
not care you know yeah so naturally i'm gonna you know edit but when we do it when we when we're
00:36:08.240
presenting these kind of you know edited selves when we when we think we're in our most intimate
00:36:14.500
relationships and we start to talk about facebook as as part of our intimate life that is when it
00:36:23.080
becomes a problem if people talked about facebook as part of their personal publicity campaign
00:36:28.540
it would be yeah that's right but they don't they talk about it as where they see their identity
00:36:35.140
and what i've found is that people look at facebook and they see this reflection of themselves that they
00:36:40.360
can barely recognize and they begin to feel this fear of missing this this way that you call it fear
00:36:48.720
of missing out yeah and they begin to feel it about their own lives like hold on who is this person who
00:36:55.200
has this glamorous life you know is that me is that me i don't think so but i i put it you know
00:37:01.940
you become jealous of yourself and that's not a good alienated from your own experience and that's not
00:37:08.680
good yeah that's not good that's really a problem and you make a bigger case though with this self
00:37:13.520
editing thing that it in in the end can affect democracy in a lot of ways because people are because
00:37:20.140
they're constantly we're aware that anything we could say at any moment or do is being not only
00:37:26.200
surveyed you know being um watched by the government or corporations but it's being watched by others
00:37:30.960
and they're you say there's a tendency for people to self-edit maybe a controversial idea because they
00:37:37.320
don't want to uh suffer the consequences that could come from that idea whether it's their job or their
00:37:43.200
social life or whatever absolutely this is one of the most i think this is one of the most important
00:37:50.840
um really one of the most important um parts of my book which is where i discuss um the um
00:38:07.340
how should i say the the the the implications of the way we're living now for
00:38:16.060
for democracy and the question that we're not asking ourselves enough of not only can there be
00:38:26.240
intimacy without privacy but can there be democracy without privacy and i i talk about a young woman
00:38:32.960
who who says to me during a time of tremendous political unrest in the united states i mean
00:38:39.960
it was a a moment where a lot of things were happening politically that really were there was a lot to
00:38:46.520
talk about and she said to me and this is a woman who had just graduated from an ivy league university
00:38:51.980
a brilliant young woman about to go into financial services on top of her game i mean so smart she
00:38:58.400
majored in economics and she so smart um and she said i'm glad i don't have anything controversial to
00:39:05.700
say i'm glad i don't have anything controversial to say because i'd have to say it online because
00:39:11.840
that's the only place to talk and it would be public and i that wouldn't be good in other words she is
00:39:19.460
she's making sure that she doesn't have anything controversial to say she's making sure she doesn't have
00:39:26.860
anything controversial to say because saying something controversial would be inconvenient
00:39:32.440
and and that's how we're living and and and um and not only that but there are these there are very
00:39:42.340
interesting studies that show that we post i mean getting back to the facebook effect i mean
00:39:46.820
online we post what our follow what we think our followers will like and that leads us to
00:39:54.420
what's called the spiral of silence where we're posting more and more of what we think other
00:40:01.160
people will like so we're hearing more and more of what people think we'll like and we're we're
00:40:08.980
saying more and more of what people we think people will like i mean this is not this is not good
00:40:15.280
yeah so michelle foucault got it right that uh yeah we would uh self-edit ourselves that's that's how
00:40:21.480
tyranny would come yeah yeah but this is a new kind of so this is a new kind of that i mean this
00:40:27.540
is this is a it's it's kind of taking it to a higher power in a way you really are yeah well let's
00:40:34.800
let's talk about sort of brass tacks about how you reclaim conversation and you you leave some great
00:40:41.000
tips but i thought it was really interesting the start of your book you you make the case that one
00:40:44.840
of the first things you have to do to reclaim conversation is to reclaim solitude i thought that was
00:40:50.300
interesting because you know there's all these research i think people confuse solitude with
00:40:55.020
loneliness your previous book was called together alone or alone together you know we're all feeling
00:41:00.020
more and more lonely so why would solitude be the first thing we need to do to reclaim conversation
00:41:06.620
well solitude is not loneliness solitude is is kind of the opposite of loneliness solitude is when
00:41:18.460
you are content with yourself and solitude is not that easy to achieve i mean you achieve solitude
00:41:27.540
actually by being in conversation when you're young i mean ideally when you're young with someone who
00:41:35.420
leaves you a little space for your own thoughts and so gradually you become more at peace with being
00:41:42.720
with your own thoughts and you know you can think back to a grandfather who took you on walks and who
00:41:51.200
just gradually you know held your hand but just then didn't chat with you much and you each were in your
00:41:57.880
own mind but he was there um my grandmother used to take me for walks in prospect park and we chatted a
00:42:09.120
little but basically we we looked at the pigeons fed the pigeons i mean she taught me a kind of
00:42:15.780
contentment in my own mind um that's solitude being comfortable with your own inner dialogue now
00:42:25.200
that's not loneliness and it's interesting that we learn solitude when we're you know by by first being
00:42:34.120
with someone else and comfortable with our own self when we're with someone else but let me get to
00:42:40.880
your question having defined solitude of what it means of why it is that solitude is the pathway to
00:42:49.120
conversation because and and relationship because if you're content with who you are
00:42:57.500
you can listen to another person and really hear what they have to say instead of needing to project
00:43:09.000
you what you need to hear onto that conversation with them so we all shun people and actually they're
00:43:23.000
technically they're called narcissistic personality disorder people but we don't need to have that
00:43:27.620
you know name for them but we technically want to stay away from people we instinctively want to stay
00:43:34.760
away from people who don't know who they are and who want us to somehow tell them who they are
00:43:40.420
um and we're comfortable with people who know who they are and who can listen to us
00:43:48.800
and be in relationship with us because they let us be who we are and that's what you want to achieve
00:43:55.560
to be in relationship and that's what you're looking for in conversation and so um uh
00:44:06.940
you're the pathway toward relationship passes through a capacity for solitude
00:44:17.020
and that's why i get into i don't think fights but there's a misunderstanding of my work
00:44:25.440
uh and not just my work but at this very important point by people who say okay let's give turkle this
00:44:33.260
that it's good to um it's good to be um uh maybe it's not good to take out your phone when you're with
00:44:42.720
another person let's grant her that but what's the trouble with taking out my phone if i'm alone
00:44:48.180
i mean what does that hurt why would that bother sherry turkle you know what what what what does she
00:44:56.380
what's her problem with that and the reason that it's a problem is because if you don't develop
00:45:05.840
the capacity if you are always looking to be stimulated and can't be alone you will always be
00:45:14.080
looking for somebody else to tell you who you are to stimulate you you won't be able to develop this
00:45:19.720
capacity for solitude and as a matter of fact there's a there's an incredible um new study that
00:45:27.500
showed that after six minutes people without a device who were just asked to sit quietly without a
00:45:35.060
device or a book begin to give themselves electroshocks rather than just be willing to
00:45:42.820
sit alone without a device i mean that's kind of where it's come to and that's that's pretty amazing
00:45:49.440
yeah well it sounds like the the phone makes us other directed i guess it was reisman that talked
00:45:55.300
about in the lonely crowd yes yes reisman reisman yeah absolutely other directed to i would say other
00:46:01.460
directed to a higher power other directed to it to a degree that he never would have been able to
00:46:07.760
anticipate yeah he wrote that 50 year like in the 1950s so 60 years ago so yes didn't think about the
00:46:14.100
internet well um professor turkle before we head out i mean i'd love for you just to leave some i don't
00:46:19.380
know some action points i always like to end podcasts this way but anything that people can do today
00:46:23.700
uh to reclaim conversation in their own lives besides the solitude thing we got this i think
00:46:29.700
that we've figured out the importance of solitude and the nuance of your argument there um but anything
00:46:33.940
else that people can do to reclaim conversation absolutely um i don't believe in you know you know
00:46:39.940
people spending so many hours doing this or so many hours doing this but i do believe in spaces
00:46:45.460
you in your car no devices you're not no texting for you you're driving and no devices for anyone else
00:46:56.180
in the car the car is a sacred space for conversation if people in your family complain you just say or
00:47:02.500
friends you just say you know it's really important that i talk to you and the car is really a great place
00:47:08.720
for that so in our family this is how it works and try not to wait until your child is 15
00:47:15.380
to 16 years old to make to explain this but if you explain this to a relatively young child that this
00:47:22.740
is just how your family culture is they will accept it they'll be okay with that um so that's the first
00:47:30.260
thing uh sacred spaces um uh and then it works sacred spaces at work no matter what level you are in
00:47:39.620
your organization the same designing for conversation in the workplace has to be part of how we think
00:47:47.700
about work going forward getting rid of this idea that the pilot in the cockpit is is is working is the
00:47:56.580
best way of working that that's the person who's really accomplishing stuff that would go a tremendous
00:48:02.260
way toward reclaiming conversation just getting that out of our minds i i just gave a a talk the
00:48:09.220
other day and and somebody stood up and he says but but after listening to me he says but isn't it
00:48:13.940
really that don't you get the most done when you just have your earphones on and you're just at your
00:48:18.020
screen and doing your email and i just looked at him and i said no no that's not when you get the most
00:48:24.740
done that's not all the research is showing that isn't when you get the most done and the third
00:48:30.500
thing what would be to get rid of multitasking um we we've we've kidded ourselves long enough we all
00:48:38.420
know that multitasking is is is interfering not only with conversation it's interfering with productivity
00:48:46.820
and it's it's inhibiting us um from from from from really from knowing ourselves and from knowing
00:48:56.580
what we think and and we um are distracting ourselves and and really unitasking is the next
00:49:04.020
big thing and conversation is a human way to practice um unitasking so that's another big thing
00:49:14.100
and you know my favorite is like author's choice just to end up you know my my favorite line in my
00:49:19.940
book is that conversation you know that that technology makes us forget what we know about
00:49:25.300
life um that father who is is tech is texting and doing his emails when he's giving his daughter a
00:49:32.900
bath he knows he knows that he's doing something that isn't good for his child and he he's doing it
00:49:39.860
anyway so accept your vulnerabilities and design around them and uh conversation is there to claim along
00:49:48.340
with a better relationship to each other and to politics and to the world fantastic well professor
00:49:54.580
turkle work people find out more about the book at um www reclaiming conversation book.com
00:50:03.620
fantastic well professor turkle thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:50:07.140
my my pleasure my guest today was sherry turkle she's the author of the book reclaiming conversation
00:50:11.940
the power of talk in a digital age and you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores
00:50:15.700
everywhere go check it out fantastic book well that wraps up another edition of the art of
00:50:23.140
manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website
00:50:27.220
at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you give
00:50:30.820
us a review on itunes or stitcher that help us get some feedback on how we can improve the show
00:50:34.900
as well as get the word out about the podcast to others as always i appreciate your continued
00:50:39.060
support of the podcast thank you so much and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly