Information overload causes conversation to crash

I read an article in "The Economist" (December 23rd 2006) the other day. It was on the art of conversation entitled "Chattering Classes." It went through a brief history of conversation through the ages, from Socrates and Plato to today's Barnes & Nobles shelves brimming with self-help books on how to be a better conversationalist. The main comment of the article was on how the etiquette of conversations has changed remarkably little from the time that Cicero in 44BC wrote "On Duties."

The final portion of the article states quotes Stephen Miller as writing "neither digital music players nor computers were invented to help people avoid real conversations, but they have that effect." This struck me as remarkably true.

In late 17th century France the French elites were shut out of politics by an absolute monarch and then turned their energies towards entertaining themsleves. And you know what they did? They had conversations. Conversations that were highly scrutinized and highly stylised. We don't do that anymore. We don't sit and talk for the eentertainment. The television is always on, and if not the television then the stereo system. Dinner is taken in front the television or in front of the computer. Conversations reduced to the bare minimum number of words without care for grammar or spelling or punctuation or form.

I am not going to decry technology. I am not going to blame MSN Messenger for the decline of the english language. Nor libel the iPod, or cell phones, or PSP's or other portable media for the downfall of civilization. But these devices, these technologies were meant to make our lives more enjoyable, not less and how can our lives be more enjoyable when we would rather plug ourselves in to the latest offering of Snoop Dogg than to converse with our fellow man?

Our generation has instant access to such a vast library of information, information that is constantly being updated as new information screams through the twenty-four hour news cycle. Yet take a look at your MSN conversations, think about your last cell phone exchange, or even the last time you talked to an actual human being. Rarely do we converse above small talk. Perhaps so many topics are wrapped up in political correctness that we have given up trying to tiptoe through a conversation. Perhaps we have become so good at filtering through the ocean of information available to us that we are able to boil down everything to a couple of bullet points. Perhaps we simply find it less enjoyable to talk with one another than to see some fame-seeker eat a worm trying to win $50,000. Either way, it is a shame that the art of conversation has been sent back to the stone age.