Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our
relationships creativity and productivity-and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can
help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we are always
communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author
and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an
enthusiast for its possibilities here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work at
home in politics and in love we find ways around conversation tempted by the possibilities
of a text or an email in which we don't have to look listen or reveal ourselves. We develop a
taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with
phones for their parents' attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when
only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work we retreat to our screens although
it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to
work. Online we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with - a politics
that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square. The case for
conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are
endangered: these days always connected we see loneliness as a problem that technology should
solve. Afraid of being alone we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves and our
capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation
everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the
bottom line. In the private sphere it builds empathy friendship love learning and
productivity. But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures. Based on five years
of research and interviews in homes schools and the workplace Turkle argues that we have
come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time
is right to reclaim conversation. The most human-and humanizing-thing that we do. The virtues
of person-to-person conversation are timeless and our most basic technology talk responds to
our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start we have each other.
