Reclaiming Conversation

Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.

We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square.

The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity.

But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures.

Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do.

The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.

Torture Is Not Culture!

"AT SCHOOL THEY HAVE REPLACED THE SUBJECT OF CIVIC VALUES FOR
BULLFIGHTING VALUES"

British comedian Ricky Gervais has called for bullfighting to be banned after learning of the death of 29-year-old Miguel Ruiz Pérez, who died after being gored during summer festivities in the town of Lerín, in the northeastern Navarre region.

“Poor terrified bull. Ban cruel sports,” he wrote on Monday in a retweet of a Daily Mirror video showing Ruiz Pérez attempting to outrun the animal in a makeshift bullring while hundreds of people looked on.

Gervais has since posted a video on his Facebook page in which he says: “If you decide to torture an animal to death, I hope it defends itself.” Describing the people who watch bullfights as morons, he adds: “If you choose to fight a bull for fun, fuck you.”

The comedian, who shot to fame a decade ago in The Office, dismissed arguments defending bullfighting on the grounds that it was tradition, noting that slavery, witchcraft and child sacrifice were also once regularly practiced: “We’ve moved on… it’s about fucking time you stopped.”

Men attacking and terrorizing the Toro de la Vega in 2017

Gervais tweeted several times about bullfighting over the day: “A matador being killed by a bull is not the tragic bit. Torturing the bull for fun in the first place is the tragic bit.”

The video has since been shared around 10,000 times, with most people supporting Gervais’s position and calling for an end to bullfighting. Gervais is an active defender of animal rights, and recently joined a number of Hollywood stars in condemning the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe last month by a US dentist. “Animals don’t have a voice, but I do. And it’s a big one. My voice is for them and I will never be quiet as long as they are suffering,” he has said.

Growing numbers of Spanish celebrities are also calling for an end to bullfighting and the use of animals in festivities. La tortura no es cultura (Torture isn’t culture) is an awareness drive initiated by PACMA, a political party that supports animal rights. Its campaign to ban the Toro de la Vega, an event dating back to medieval times in which a bull is ritually killed by residents of the town of Tordesillas, Valladolid province, each September 15, has been backed by actors and television personalities such as Dani Rovira, Jorge Javier Vázquez, Eva Isanta and David Muro.

“I find it abhorrent that people can enjoy the suffering of animals,” says Dani Rovira, star of last year’s hit Spanish comedy Ocho apellidos vascos. A demonstration is planned in Madrid for September 12 to call for an end to the Toro de la Vega.

Musicians and other artists have thrown their support behind a planned music festival in Tordesillas to coincide with the Toro de la Vega. 

El País in English, August 19th, 2015

"AND THAT PATRON SAINT, DOES HE KNOW WHAT YOU DO?"

Volcano by JUNGLE: The Music and The Dancing of Our Time

Volcano is a hypnotic dance film by London-based company Jungle, now on YouTube. Not only is Shay Latukolan’s choreography mesmerizing, but also the dancing, the styling, the lighting, the camera work, the cinematography are pure joy. People are comparing some of their dance movements to Bob Fosse. Although the group’s striking series of 14 one-shot music videos has gone viral on social media, you may call Jungle a band, or a music collective — just don’t call them famous, as they are not interested in notions of celebrity. Sill, Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland’s electrifying electronic mix of funk, hip-hop and jazzy/techno beat will get you hooked. Sit back and watch the 49-min. film on your computer or on your TV screen. You are bound to flip out. It's simply a masterpiece of modern dance. Brilliant beyond words. Enjoy it!