There are two kinds of people in the world; people who read/write blogs, and those who don’t. There’s twitter, text, skype, RSS feeds and a bazillion other programs and devices designed to make communication more convenient for the masses. It’s undeniably much easier in this age of uber technology to blast off a line or two in order to remain connected, but in light of the limited space/time/effort required to keep in touch these days, it does beg the question; Are we losing the art of conversation?

That which use to be a long hand written letter became the phone call which has somewhere along the line morphed into a 9 word twitter update sent out rather randomly to everyone you know. People announce their hook ups and their break ups on Facebook and share family photos on flicker. There is now such a vast array of ways to reach out and touch someone that I have to wonder if at some point we will cease to bother with talking all together. Okay, that may be a stretch but our ways of communicating with others has changed so radically in the last 20 years that you simply have to wonder what’s around the next bend in the technological road.

There are obvious benefits to these advancements in communications but there is also a downside that, though more difficult to recognize, affects us all in one way or another. This is particularly true for the kids who will grow up knowing nothing but the fast easy details typed out in abbreviated textspeak. Even blogging, which on the surface appears to be one continual conversation of authored posts and reader comments, is in reality a type of conversational shorthand. The topic is determined by author and most often reflects their own personal opinion and is then posted for all to see and to ponder over. The reader can then post a comment to the author who is most likely already working on the next post on an entirely different topic. Yes, it is an exchange, but is it really a conversation?

Besides turning our conversations into short snippets designed to relay maximum information with minimum effort, methods such as text, twitter, and blogs also rob us of a certain level of spontaneity. You can be selective with regards to when you chose to answer and what kind of time you need to formulate that answer. It can be mulled over, text can be deleted, spell and grammar checked and errors corrected. The ability to edit is a marvelous thing but it also stifles dialogue in that you have the ability to put forth a “scrubbed clean” version of your original thought or response. I personally think that this loss of spontaneity dampens the passion one might normally find in a conversation, particularly a heated one. I don’t mind the incorrect word usage, the mumbling fumbling of trying to piece together a thought or the gush of words that you just can’t keep back. I do however mind only having access to the prettier cleaner version of thoughts or feelings.

It is unfortunate that the benefits of all of this technology are knocked down a peg or two by the emotions that often get lost in translation.  Whether you blog, text, email or twitter, it is a tried and true fact that emotions often don’t translate well within a few lines of type. I don’t think that it can be called a conversation if emotions need to be explained or accompanied by little yellow smiley or frowny faces. It’s not the medium itself that necessarily buries emotion because if this were so then we would be a world without profound or moving literature, which we are clearly not. Fear, sarcasm, pain, excitement, sadness or love can be expressed just as beautifully in written form as they can be verbally, so that isn’t the culprit in our losing the art of conversation, it’s the pseudo new language that has appeared in light of our technological advances. Sentences full of depth and nuance are whittled down to four words and an exclamation mark, and a favorable response becomes :). As our ability to pare down our exchanges expands, we become a society that are simply sending directions, commands or instructions; Ware r u? C u 2nite! Brt.

Without out even realizing it we are slowly turning our backs on the beauty of words. Putting those little words together in a way that shows what is in our heart, hands, or head so that someone else can crawl inside for a moment and understand what we are feeling. In the right order, they can portray any emotion that you or I can ever imagine experiencing. We will never loose our language, our words, completely. They will always be there. I do however fear loosing the ability to make them full and beautiful and ripe with the feelings that make us the fallible humans that we are.
k thnx bia

**Article originally appeared in Off-Centre Magazine as my November 2008 piece**