Conversation
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Uploaded by
SianeFor Conversation, Press #1
by Michael Alvear
I’ve got a cell phone, e-mail, and voice mail. index goes up. You can’t even call a person to
So why am I so lonely? A funny thing get the phone number of another person
happened on the way to the communications anymore. Directory assistance is almost always
revolution: we stopped talking to one another. fully automated.
I was walking in the park with a friend recently, Pumping gas at the station? Why say good-
and his cell phone rang, interrupting our morning to the attendant when you can swipe
conversation. There we were, walking and your credit card at the pump and save yourself
talking on a beautiful sunny day and–poof!–I the bother of human contact? Making a deposit
became invisible, absent from the conversation. at the bank? Why talk to a clerk who might live
in the neighborhood when you can just insert
The park was filled with people talking on their your card into the ATM?
cell phones. They were passing other people
without looking at them, saying hello, noticing Pretty soon you won’t have the burden of
their babies or stopping to pet their puppies. making eye contact at the grocery store. Some
Evidently, the untethered electronic voice is supermarket chains are using a self-scanner so
preferable to human contact. you can check yourself out, avoiding those
annoying clerks who look at you and ask how
The telephone used to connect you to the you are doing.
absent. Now it makes people sitting next to
you feel absent. Recently I was in a car with I am no Luddite. I own a cell phone, an ATM
three friends. The driver shushed the rest of us card, a voice-mail system, an e-mail account.
because he could not hear the person on the Giving them up isn’t an option–they’re great
other end of his cell phone. There we were, for what they’re intended to do. It’s their
four friends zooming down the highway, unintended consequences that make me cringe.
unable to talk to one another because of a
gadget designed to make communication More and more, I find myself hiding behind e-
easier. mail to do a job meant for conversation. Or
being relieved that voice mail picked up
Why is it that the more connected we get, the because I didn’t really have time to talk. The
more disconnected I feel? Every advance in industry devoted to helping me keep in touch
communications technology is a setback to the is making me lonelier–or at least facilitating my
intimacy of human interaction. With e-mail and antisocial instincts.
instant messaging over the Internet, we can
now communicate without seeing or talking to So I’ve put myself on technology restriction:
one another. no instant messaging with people who live
near me, no cell-phoning in the presence of
With voice mail, you can conduct entire friends, no letting the voice mail pick up when
conversations without ever reaching anyone. If I’m home. What good is all this gee-whiz
my mom has a question, I just leave the technology if there’s no one in the room to
answer on her machine. hear you exclaim, “Gee whiz”
As almost every conceivable contact between
human beings gets automated, the alienation
