Facetime, Skype, WhatsApp, and Snapchat have replaced significant amounts of face-to-face conversation for many people.
These apps allow us to converse with each other quickly and easily, overcoming distances, time zones, and countries. We can even talk to virtual assistants such as Alexa, Cortana, or Siri, commanding them to play our favorite songs or films or tell us the weather forecast.
These ways of communicating reduce the need to speak to another human being. This has led to some conversational snippets of our daily lives, mainly via technological devices. So we no longer need to talk with shop assistants, receptionists, bus drivers, or coworkers. We engage with a screen to communicate whatever we want to say.
In fact, in these scenarios, we tend to speak to other people only when digital technology fails to operate successfully. For instance, human contact occurs when we call for an assistant to help us when an item is not recognized at the self-service checkout.
When we can connect so quickly and easily with others using devices and applications, it is easy to start overlooking the value of face-to-face conversation. It seems easier to text someone rather than meet with them.
Bodily Cues
My research into digital technologies indicates that phrases such as “word of mouth” or “keeping in touch” point to the importance of face-to-face conversation. Indeed, face-to-face discussion can strengthen social ties with our neighbors, friends, work colleagues, and other people we encounter during our day. It acknowledges their existence and humanness in ways that instant messaging and texting do not.
A face-to-face conversation is a rich experience that involves drawing on memories, making connections, making mental images and associations, and choosing a response. A face-to-face conversation is also multisensory: it’s not just about sending or receiving pre-programmed trinkets such as likes, cartoon love hearts, and grinning yellow emojis.
When video conversing, you mainly see another person’s face only as a flat image on a screen. But in a real-life face-to-face conversation, we can look into someone’s eyes, reach out, and touch them. We can also observe the other person’s body posture and gestures when speaking and interpret these accordingly. All these factors contribute to the sensory intensity and depth of face-to-face conversations in daily life.
Speaking to Machines
Sherry Turkle, professor of social studies of science and technology, warns that when we first “speak through machines, [we] forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, creativity, and capacity for empathy.” But then “we take a further step and speak not just through machines but to machines.”
In many ways, our everyday lives now involve a blend of face-to-face and technologically mediated forms of communication. However, in my teaching and research, I explain how digital forms of communication can supplement, rather than replace, face-to-face conversation.
At the same time, it is also essential to acknowledge that some people value online communication because they can express themselves in ways they might find difficult through face-to-face conversation.
Look Up From Your Phone
Gary Turk is a spoken word poet whose poem “Look Up” illustrates what happens when people become entranced by technological ways of communicating at the expense of connecting with others face-to-face.
TurkTurk’ sm draws attention to the rich sensory communication of face-to-face communication, valuing bodily presence in terms of friendship, companionship, and intimacy. The central idea running TurkTurk’s evocative poem is that screen-based devices consume our attention while distancing us from the bodily sense of being with others.
Ultimately, our technological devices cannot entirely replace the sound, touch, smell, and observation of bodily cues we experience in face-to-face conversation. Communicating and connecting with others through face-to-face discussion is valuable because it cannot be edited, paused, or replayed.
So next time you are between human and machine at the supermarket checkout or whether to get up from your desk and walk to another office to talk to a colleague rather than sending them an email, it might be worth following Turk’Turk’sce and engaging with the human rather than the screen.
