IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 11

College classes taught online
lack the spontaneity and passion of the live classroom.
Something major is being lost
from education.
■ At company meetings, people
are so distracted by their devices that no one is really paying
attention to anything. Employees working at home and participating in conference phone
calls, or Skype, are looking at
other screens at the same time;
conference calls are ineffective
and lead to stress. Employers
recognizing this are trying to
limit their workers' privilege to
work at home.
■ Romantic
relationships are
undone by texting; people are
much crueler than in live conversation because they don't
receive the visual cues that
accompany live talk.
■ We are facing a situation as
serious as that described by
Rachel Carson in her 1962
book Silent Spring which documented the destruction of
nature - most especially bird
life - by the indiscriminate use
of chemical pesticides. Now the
assault is on the human capacity for empathy.

slow adoption of these technologies:
they crept up on us. Although Bell
introduced his telephone in 1876,
by the eve of World War II a majority of American homes were still not
connected. And although the Model
T Ford - the first truly affordable
car - emerged in 1908, by 1940
slightly over 40% of American families still did not own an auto [2].
The iPhone, by contrast, appeared
in 2007, just 8 years before Turkle's
publication. A survey made in 2015
by the Pew Research Center showed
that 68 percent of American adults
have smartphones. Some of the
remaining 32% probably have tablets that give them connectivity.
Only television rivals the mobile
device in its speed of adoption by
the American people.
Because the telephone made its
way slowly into the American home,
its power to disrupt was less apparent. Moreover, during its almost
imperceptible adoption, society
created a set of customs for its
use: times of day when you should
or should not call someone, the
kinds of subjects appropriate for
phone conversation (more about
this below), a concern about using
a telephone from a friend's house
where you might run up a large bill,
the protocol to use when a friend is
visiting and someone phones you -
do you neglect the first person and
talk to the second? This was not as
simple as it now seems - long distance calls were expensive. Starting
in the early 20th century, etiquette
books had chapters on how to use
this relatively new invention. As for
the automobile, because of its slow
adoption and obvious advantages,
we were numbed to its increasing
death toll. And yet, for a century,
measures have gradually made cars
and roads safer.
In the fullness of time we are
developing rules and customs to
deal with mobile devices. Professors

■

This is quite a damning list. But,
one might put together a litany indicting the classical telephone: How do
you like being interrupted at dinner
or while making love? How do you
like it when your boss phones you
just before you fall asleep?
Or how do you like an invention
that reliably kills over 33 000 Americans a year and has consistently
killed that many, or more, for nearly
three generations? I'm speaking here
of the automobile. There is no book
currently in print condemning the
automobile and the telephone with
the same passion that Turkle brings
to mobile devices. The reason is the
DECEMBER 2016

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

frequently insist that these instruments be turned off in lecture. A
teaching assistant is sometimes delegated to police this. Turkle speaks
of the recently developed "rule of
threes." If three people are engaged
in a conversation, then one of the
three may without shame check her
mobile device. Etiquette is evolving.
Turkle's book contains numerous
anecdotes in support of her thesis
that conversation is declining. My
own amateur field work took me to a
number of restaurants, at lunch time,
near Turkle's M.I.T. I left puzzled. If
conversation is dying, then why was
there so much of it? Indeed, conversation was so abundant and noisy
that I found it hard to speak with my
table mates. And yes, I did see some
phones on the table and diners pick
one up and talk quickly, after making
a brief apology. "Sorry, but I have to
take this call." Is this so terrible?
Conversation has its own history, dating well before the debate
engendered by the mobile device.
Dinner time conversation, for which
Turkle displays an overt nostalgia,
was threatened in the last century
as televisions became so cheap that
one could be assigned to dining
areas. Families frequently watched
the evening news and one wonders
what effect it had on children as
they tucked into their hamburgers
while they watched some poor devil
of a soldier who had just had his leg
blown off. What kind of insensitivity and detachment might this have
required and what does this say of
the American evening meal?1
Historians and essayists have
discussed the art of conversation -
and in many cases its decline - for
centuries. A recent excellent contribution is Conversation: A History of a Declining Art by Stephen
1

Even in the age of the mobile device, about
two-thirds of American families watch TV at
dinner http://www.statisticbrain.com/televisionwatching-statistics/.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/television

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016