E-mail and text messaging may make our everyday lives a bit easier, but there's also a downside in the way they affect how we talks to one another.
Some people are worried that the art of conversation, face to face, may be dying.
Anna Chudyk -, for example, lets her fingers do the talking while talking up a storm with a close friend through MSN, a web-based instant messaging service...
A busy school schedule prevents the 21 year old university student from actually seeing her friends very much, so MSN has become her principal means of keeping in touch...
Anna says, "I don't get together for coffee with people as much just because I don't have time, and really it's not as necessary to make time to catch up on how someone's doing if you can sit in front of your screen."
And where she goes, so too does her laptop computer...
Anna adds, " My laptop crashed in the summer. I was without it for about three days and I was going crazy... Yeah it was horrible."
Anna is typical of people in her age range who have grown up with cell phones, computers and instant messaging.....
Typically that generation comes from families with only one or two children at home.
Statistics compiled by London's Fanshawe College show those kids rely more on their friends than their families -- so keeping in touch is extremely important.
Christina Marquis says " We talk a lot on the computer. We do that a lot. The computer is my life, basically."
Jen Piccolo says " It's a thing that you live with, it's just another attachment, it's the way you live. I mean, I use my computer every day all the time."
But is the explosion of text messaging...Email...Cell phones....etc coming at the expense of human relations...?
Jacqui Denomme figures face to face conversation is a dying art....
Jacqui a member of the social sciences department at London Central Library, and she believes the human touch is getting lost.
She says, " The level that people are relating at is sometimes not as true and real because it's coming....maybe it's coming from their head to their hands and out on to a screen, but it's not necessarily coming from a place of reality."
So, is virtual communication -- killing real conversation...?
Socialogist Bernard Hammond thinks it isn't because he believes technology may even give a voice to those who would otherwise remain silent....
Hammond says, " Adults in general can communicate sometimes some of their deepest feelings with people through email who they don't know or who they've never met on a face to face basis.."
WE NEVER TALKS ANYMORE ( PART TWO )
In a corner of the London Central Library sits a group of 16 people who show up for the one thing they can't seem to find anywhere else....good conversation...
As the coordinator of the gathering Bill Paul puts it, " It seems obvious, but sometimes we forget that gathering together in circles, in groups, is human nature. It brings out the best in us. It brings out new ideas."
The club is called Socrates Cafe, and those who come to it to take part in the monthly meetings say they're educational, stimulating, and often times provocative...
Jacqui says, " You feel like something is cooking, something good is happening. You feel a sense of connection with the people in the circle even if you are coming from opposite points of view..."
The club was formed out of a concern that meaningful, face to face conversation has become a casualty of the technological boom.... the members see themselves as keepers of a dying tradition......
Mary Anne says, " This is about reliving the oral tradition because it's something that has perhaps passed us by in this technological era...Email, cell phones, and all that. We've forgotten how to communicate about things that matter, without little symbols and little blips and all that".
Bill Paul adds, " I suppose we could all sit in our little cubicles and type to each other and text each other and communicate on computer...Uh....but human beings are by nature social beings..."
Each time the group meets a different topic is discussed.......Usually it's philosophical....but sometimes the talk evolves out of a lighter subject such as human emotion... On this night the question asked is- "is our world ruled by emotion...?"
However, English Professor Otte Rosenkrantz says the golden age of conversation may not have been so golden...
He says, " I think of 18th century families and what life was like for them...Not all of them sat around in oak-lined libraries in front of fireplaces with a snifter of brandy and talked about politics and religion. "
And he suggests the decline of conversation may be a myth....
"I'm not so sure that the conversation that took place over subject matter was all that different. So is face to face, meaningful conversation fading away.....And can it be saved......? Or....was it ever the norm to begin with...? maybe that's a subject for a future meeting...."
Meanwhile, Bill Paul says, " Here at the Socrates Cafe we ask the big questions. We don't always have the answers. But we certainly have lots of good discussion."
The Socrates Cafe is open to anyone who wants to attend on the last Monday of every month near the Little Red Roaster cafe in the Central Library.
