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Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age QUOTES

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age QUOTES

1 " I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can't get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right. But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiency of mere connection. I fear we forget the difference. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

2 " There is another way to think about conversation, one that is less about information and more about creating a space to be explored. You are interested in hearing about how another person approaches things—her or her opinions and associations. In this kind of conversation—I think of it as 'whole person conversation'—if things go quiet for a while you look deeper, you don't look away or text a friend. You try to read your friends in a different way. Perhaps you look into their faces or attend to their body language. Or you allow for silence. Perhaps when we talk about 'conversations' being boring, such a frequent complaint, we are saying how uncomfortable we are with stillness. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

3 " I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

4 " But if we don’t have experience with solitude—and this is often the case today—we start to equate loneliness and solitude. This reflects the impoverishment of our experience. If we don’t know the satisfactions of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

5 " Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

6 " In order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee solitude. In time, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves is diminished. If we don’t know who we are when we are alone, we turn to other people to support our sense of self. This makes it impossible to fully experience others as who they are. We take what we need from them in bits and pieces; it is as though we use them as spare parts to support our fragile selves. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

7 " When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free. Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

8 " The web promises to make our world bigger. But as it works now, it also narrows our exposure to ideas. We can end up in a bubble in which we hear only the ideas we already know. Or already like. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

9 " We are at a moment of temptation, ready to turn to machines for companionship even as we seem pained or inconvenienced to engage with each other in settings as simple as a grocery store. We want technology to step up as we ask people to step back. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

10 " is not a problem looking for a quick fix. Life is a conversation and you need places to have it. The virtual provides us with more spaces for these conversations and these are enriching. But what makes the physical so precious is that it supports continuity in a different way; it doesn’t come and go, and it binds people to it. You can’t just log off or drop out. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

11 " Intelligence once meant more than what any artificial intelligence does. It used to include sensibility, sensitivity, awareness, discernment, reason, acumen, and wit. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

12 " The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this “the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking.” Von Kleist quotes the French proverb that “appetite comes from eating” and observes that it is equally the case that “ideas come from speaking.” The best thoughts, in his view, can be almost unintelligible as they emerge; what matters most is risky, thrilling conversation as a crucible for discovery. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

13 " Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

14 " The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

15 " To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, to defer going “elsewhere” at least some of the time. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

16 " What do we forget when we talk to machines? We forget what is special about being human. We forget what it means to have authentic conversation. Machines are programmed to have conversations “as if” they understood what the conversation is about. So when we talk to them, we, too, are reduced and confined to the “as if. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

17 " But these conversations require time and space, and we say we’re too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, we find traces of a new “silent spring”—a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

18 " These days, students struggle with conversation. What makes sense is to engage them in it. The more you think about educational technology, with all its bells and whistles, the more you circle back to the simple power of conversation. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

19 " Mobile technology is here to stay, along with all the wonders it brings. Yet it is time for us to consider how it may get in the way of other things we hold dear—and how once we recognize this, we can take action: We can both redesign technology and change how we bring it into our lives. A "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

20 " In family conversation, much of the work is done as children learn they are in a place they can come back to, tomorrow and tomorrow. When digital media encourage us to edit ourselves until we have said the “right thing,” we can lose sight of the important thing: Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation. In family conversations, children learn that what can matter most is not the information shared but the relationships sustained. It is hard to sustain those relationships if you are on your phone. "

― Sherry Turkle , Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age