Close by, but not close

Is "going out with friends" just texting in a group of people all in the same place? A new book considers how we are forgetting how to talk with each other.

"...A psychologist and the director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, Turkle has studied our relationship with technology for decades, showcasing her findings in works such as “Life on the Screen” and “Alone Together.” And while it is tempting to lump “Reclaiming Conversation” with so many tech-skeptic manifestos — such as Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget” or Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows” — and assume we’ve heard it all before, that would be a disservice to author and reader. This is a persuasive and intimate book, one that explores the minutiae of human relationships. Turkle uses our experiences to shame us, showing how, phones in hand, we turn away from our children, friends and co-workers, even from ourselves.

“I had three chairs in my house,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Walden”; “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Thoreau’s chairs are a recurring theme for Turkle. Solitude, with the self-awareness it affords, helps us understand ourselves, she argues, which is essential to understanding others. Our conversations with other people — at home and school, in the workplace and the public square — put that empathy to work, sharpening our capacity for introspection. Reflect, talk, repeat."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/10/01/the-book-that-will-have-everyone-talking-about-how-we-never-talk-anymore/?tid=sm_fb