I’m struck by something every time I cross the UC Davis campus. My route takes me through the college’s transportation hub, where everyone catches buses to other parts of town, and then towards the school’s Memorial Union - the student epicenter on campus. And what do I see as I walk? I see students sitting individually, heads bowed, staring at a small screen. Dozens of them, silent, self-isolating, ignoring the buzz of the world around them. It saddens me, every time.
Where is the three-dimensional human interaction, I wonder? Where is the immersion in the incredibly rich diversity of UCD’s student body? Where are the spoken words, the eye contact? These facets that define human interaction seem to be largely missing in what I observe as I pass by.
What has happened, I wonder, to the art of conversation?
I’ve been pondering this, as so much of our communication now happens in electronic form. Texting, emailing, messaging on apps - all of these mediums excuse us from having to participate in the standard conversational norms that we are taught as we grow up. There is so much to be learned in the process of face-to-face conversation. We must practice reading people’s body language in order to pick up on non-verbal cues that we’ve wandered onto a sensitive topic. Feeling embarrassed by having said something inappropriate is just that - embarrassing - but feeling that awkwardness is what helps us learn to avoid acting the same way in the future. In this way we refine our conversational abilities, as with any practiced skill.
But in a new era that relies so much more on written rather than verbal communication, have we forgotten how to practice these norms? Have we forgone abiding by them in favor of expediency and convenience?
One of the first pieces of conversational etiquette that we learn as children is not to interrupt. We are schooled to let someone finish talking before we say our piece. But when we’re in the midst of a text exchange, how often do we type over those three dots indicating that our conversational partner is still speaking? We are clearly interrupting. As they continue to type, they see that we’re already typing. In other words, as they continue to speak, they realize that we are interrupting them. And why? Why do we feel compelled to keep typing, to interrupt?
Well, because we’re too busy to wait for them to finish speaking. We don’t have time. We have too much to do. And what we need to do is important. More important than them. Indeed, much of this is probably true. As we text, we are often multitasking. Our conversations via electronic means take place while we’re driving, cooking, working, studying, talking to others, answering email, surfing the web, watching TV…we are not present in these conversations. We don’t have to look at anyone’s face. Part of learning the art of conversation is learning to be an active listener. This means devoting our full attention to the speaker rather than formulating our next response. But how can we do that when we’re typing over the three dots…or when we’re trying to prompt-engineer?
If conversational etiquette is at risk due to texting, then it seems the rise of AI could be its death knell. When we’re conversing with a machine, conversational norms are out the window. No courtesy titles are necessary. We needn’t have any concern about interrupting, or oversharing, or straying into sensitive territory. The machine might correct us, or refuse to respond in the way that we’d hoped, but it won’t hold our boorishness against us. It won’t avoid us in social settings, or tell its friends that we’re radioactive. There’s little-to-no consequence to offending a machine with our choice of words, which means there’s little-to-no chance that we’ll learn to be better in our communication.
Are there benefits to using machine-learning in communication? Absolutely. The neurodivergent community (I am the proud mother of two sons on the ASD spectrum) benefits tremendously from the opportunity to express their feelings to a non-judgemental listener. Voice language programs provide a vital lifeline to those who lack expressive language entirely. People struggling with severe loneliness and isolation have found in talking to Ai companions an opportunity to feel heard and a sense of companionship that is otherwise lacking in their lives.
But for some of us, a lack of face-to-face communication could have disastrous long-term results. We fancy ourselves too busy to be present in one another’s lives, and the end result of this could be not just a loss of human connection, but a de-evolution of expressive language. Just as our written communication skills are suffering as a result of predictive text (we no longer need know how to spell anything) our verbal communication skills suffer from a lack of practice with conversational norms. Conversational etiquette is a learned skill; it can’t just be studied, it has to be practiced. In the era of electronic communication and turning our Zoom cameras off, when will we ever have an opportunity to practice? Will it be too late when we have our first in-person job interview? Will these skills disappear entirely? Part of becoming a good conversationalist means leaning into discomfort. This is how we learn to respond eloquently to challenges, how we learn to process information quickly in order to devise an appropriate response. This doesn’t work when, every time we sense a conversation taking an uncomfortable turn, we ignore that last text or email and instead go back to playing solitaire.
On the note, it’s time for me to step away from the screen. My daughter wants to talk to me.