[inaudible conversations] okay. Hello, everyone. Were going to get started. I hope you can hear me okay. Hello. Good evening, everyone. When you have an event on one of the most miserable days of the year, you get very nervous. But its great to see so many people here tonight on what is a truly awful new york city evening. We didnt really worry too much about it. Can you hear me okay now . A little better . Mic check. Okay. We didnt worry too much about it because we have a great draw today. For those of you who dont know me, my name is eric kleinen berg, professor of sociology here at nyu and also the director of the institute for public knowledge. You are in the kind of annexed space of the institute for public knowledge. Were hosting this evenings event, and we do a lot of events like this. Were the part of nyu that tries to take ideas and intellectuals that might otherwise spend too much time merchandise the ivory tower and project them out into the world. So we really aim to generate conversations between people and the University World and people outside the university who have a lot to say to one another. And we do many events like this. We urge you to get on our mailing list if youre not already part of the ipk community. So tonight is especially exciting to me. Its exciting for many reasons. One is that Sherry Turkle, our distinguished guest tonight, was hugely helpful to me and to my increasingly well known recent collaborator aziz an sari when we are writing our book, modern romance, over the last couple of years. We drew heavily from the foundation of her knowledge. And she said so many things that were interesting to us, but she told us a lot about conversation and technology and things to look out for. And i will always remember one of the most amazing experiences that aziz and i had when we were writing our book. Sherry really cued us for this event. We were doing a bunch of focus groups, and we did a focus group at the upright citizens brigade, the comedy house in chelsea. And we wanted to talk to people in different generations who were involved in relationships. And so we made an invitation to the young people who were mostly following aziz. We said, you know, youre welcome to come to this kind of focus group show, it was a strange thing we did. And basically, the tickets were free or pretty close to free. And all you have to do to get in is bring your parent or grandparent. And you can just come. And so huge numbers of people did. Its aziz, after all, they wanted to see him. And then we pulled a little bit of a surprise on them when they came in the door. We said we want the Younger Generation on one side of the auditorium, and we want the older generation on the other side of the auditorium. So we separated the group. And right before we went up on stage, aziz and i were standing behind the curtain e, and we peeked out. And we saw the most incredible thing, which is on the left side of the stage where the older generation was sitting, all of these total strangers were talking to each other. What a funny thing, how did you wind up here, do you have any idea who this aziz ansari guy is . [laughter] and on the right side, everybody was in their phone. Every Single Person was in phone world. It was a strange thing to see. But there was something that was happening about conversation and how its changed. If you talk to the people on the right side of the stage, they probably would have told you that they were involved in really intense conversation too. But it looked different, and it felt different, and we didnt go deep on this issue in our book. We told that story really quickly partly because there was no reason to. We me knew sherry was going to knock it out of the park just a few months later, as she has. [laughter] so tonight we are here for conversation about reclaiming conversation. Were not just letting sherry do a public lecture, which would be easy. We instead have the hard work of conversation ahead of us. But its going to be hard and pleasurable at the same time partly because we have marie here as well. Marita is a Dear Colleague and friend of ipk. Shes also the professor of media culture and communication here at nyu. Shes the former editor of american quarterly which is the official journal of the american studies association. And shes the author of several acclaimed books including tourists of history memory, consumerism and kitsch in american culture, and tangled memories the vietnam war, the aids epidemic and the politics of remembering, and shes also the coeditor of technological visions the hopes and fears that shape new technology. Shell obviously be drawing on things she thought about while working on those projects, especially the latter one tonight, because shes here with the guest youre all here to hear from as well, sherry terkel. Sherry is truly one of our days most influential public intellectuals. Shes a professor of the social studies of science and technology at mit, and she is the author of several landmark books. You know, books that are cited by thousands of people and that continue to have influence over people working in many different fields today. There are too many books for me to name, but i will just list some of the most well known ones, the second self, life on the screen, simulation and discontent, alone together and, of course, the book that were all here to discuss tonight, reclaiming conversation the power of talk in the ding tam age. Digital age. And i should tell you were selling the book as well, its a week launch e book launch event, and we take pride where the book vendor leaves with no books to carry home. That means youre here for free but you have to, you know, do your part at the end of the night. Professor turkle is unique for bringing a psychological as well as a sociological frame of reference to the study of digital culture. She has a real Historical Perspective on these issues, because shes been doing work in this area since the days of the first personal computers, and shes observed the arc of this culture develop. There are some observers who say that professor turkhe has changed her mind because she went from being protechnology at some point in her career to being antitechnology. But if you read her work or if you listen to her closely, youll know thats really a caricature of her thoughts. Shes not antitechnology. What she is is proconversation. Shes proface to face interaction. And shes here actually, all of us are here to have a good conversation tonight. So what i ask of you is that you, if possible, put down your device [laughter] turn it off just an hour or so, lift up your heads. Dont let us see the top of your head. [laughter] lift them up and join me in welcoming professors serkin and turkle to ipk. After they spend some time speaking with each other, join them in conversation as well. One thing i will say as preliminary, we have cspan here filming tonight, so this event will be broadcast. What that means is that when we get to the questions and answers, i will come up, and im just going to ask everyone with a question to come to the microphone, please, so people at home can hear from you as well. With that, let me ask you again to welcome our guests. [applause] so were hypermicked up here miked up here. Were micd for emergencies and [laughter] conversation on amp. I was remembering the other day that ive known you, i think, for about 20 years. Yes. And even though we havent seen each other that often, each time we have seen each other over the years weve had a really great conversation. And so i think, actually, the place where i want us to begin thinking and talking is about what is, what is a good conversation . Like, what makes a meaningful conversation . What is the conversation that you are, in your book, asking us to have . Not you and me, but right. Us. Well, thats such a wonderful question. I think that different, of course, if youre thinking about children and parents and developmentally what makes a great conversation. Because i think that a great deal of my book is talking about the dangers, really the clear and present dangers of parents not having conversations with their children. So before i answer in general about why our conversations light both of us up and i think why theres, you know, why i think theyre such great conversations, i just want to sort of make a plug for the developmental importance of parents and children meeting face to face, eye to eye. Since i just have become more and more aware of parents texting at breakfast, textinging at dinner, children tugging at the sleeves of parents who are, you know, really not paying attention to them in the park, waving to them from the jungle gym look at me, look at me and who cant talk to them, cutting vacations short because the wifi at a vacation spot, you know, doesnt work. Mothers, there are slings for moms to breastfeed and text because the slings hold a little place for the ipad, you can kind of breast feed and text at the same time. [laughter] i like to say that the Technology Makes us forget what we know about life. And what parents really know about life is that they need to look at their children, make eye contact with their children. Thats how you make a person. Thats how you make a person. And one of the most meaningful conversations i had, one of the signal conversations i had in writing this book was with a man who said that he had an 11yearold daughter, and when she was a baby, he gave her baths. And during those baths he would talk to her, play with her, sing with her. And those conversations, he knew, had formed kind of the bedrock of their relationship. And now he has a 2yearold. And when he gives her a bath, he puts her in the bathtub, makes sure the water is kind of low so she doesnt get into trouble with, you know, with the water, and he puts down the seat on the toilet and sits there and does his email on his iphone. And he says, you know, i know its not right, you know, but thats what im doing now. And those are the conversations, i mean, just to begin with my motivation for writing a book about conversation. Now, i think that this technology is making us forget what we know about life, that that cant be. Now, more generally right. More generally what a conversation does, the kinds of conversations im talking about because, after all, we dont live in a silent world, were talking to each other, are conversations where people make themselves vulnerable, where theres a certain spontaneity, where the conversation goes where it will, where you allow the conversation to go where it will. Its the opposite of when i asked, was talking about conversation with a young man who said he never likes to have a conversation, and i said, well, why . Whats wrong with conversation . And he said conversation, ill tell you whats wrong with conversation, it takes place in realtime, and you never know what youre going to say. [laughter] so, you know, define conversation that im talking about as the opposite of that; conversation as openended, where now you can ask me anything, where i allow myself to let you take me someplace. Okay. So that points to, like, the issue of trust, right . Yes. If you and a lot of your book is the, all of the means that we have today to avoid facetoface conversation whether its with a professor or in the context of a family or in a romantic relationship, right . So then if were thinking about the stakes involved in that kind of facetoface conversation, right . I was thinking earlier that, you know, these are urgent times. Theres anyone who doesnt feel like we lurch from one crisis to the next, were all afraid, theres a sense of urgency to everything. And this is, i would argue this is your most urgent book. Yes. You know . That theres a sense of urgency to it. And, certainly, the material about children have probably the most urgency in it. But i also think when were talking about urgency and crisis and the state of the world, were also talking about vulnerability, right . Whether were talking about the kind of vulnerability that we are unable to express politically, right . That then produces more violence or revenge, right . Or were talking about the kind of vulnerability that youre pointing to here which is how to have a very basic level of conversation that isnt yet scripted. So i wonder if youve, how you would think about that in relationship to the question of vulnerability. Well, you know, its interesting, one of the young women i interviewed who had Just Graduated College shocked me with this answer, which i think has a very profound leaves us with a very profound political mission. She said im glad i dont have any controversial opinions. [laughter] because on the Internet Everything is public, and everything is kept forever. And thats not a comfortable place to express yourself. And i think our sense of vulnerability, of always being seen and of everything being kept and who is watching and itll be forever, leaves us in a kind of political environment where someones basic feeling is im glad i dont have any controversial opinions. Thats very different i just want to note from saying, you know, i have lots of controversial opinions, and im really angry that the internet is a place where i really have to think about how im going to express them and where im going to express them and how im going to do it and strategize. Shes saying im glad i dont have any controversial opinions. In other words, the silencing is so profound that it happens before she even allows herself the opinion. So i think that we are so afraid of how vulnerable we feel that it can silence us really at the most basic level. And i think that goes very deep. So if were thinking about digital media, new technologies, and youve been studying technology for so long, i mean, part of what were always dealing with is the way many which new way in which new technologies, and i think social media pushes this even further, amplify existing activities, right . So im thinking you describe so many of these contexts in which people are trying to have a conversation with someone whos on their phone, right . So the sense that you cant get the attention of the person or the parent or whoever it is that youre trying to have that kind of facetoface contact with. And im thinking, well, yeah, we have a lot of predigital media versions of that, you know . The conversation at the Cocktail Party where the person youre talking to is scanning the room kind of thing. And so i guess part of my question is how do we make sense of whats different here, right . Beyond am myification and amplification and degree. Well, i think weve reached, you know, i think theres kind of a line in the sand thing here. You know, Research Shows that if you put a phone on the table between you and the person youre having lunch with, two things happen. The conversation becomes more trivial, and you and the other person feel less empathetic connection with each other. Which makes sense, because the phone symbolizes that at any moment you could be interrupted. At any moment you could be interrupted. And so my the trigger for my getting involved with conversation, my feeling that it was the right thing to write about really was the development of alwayson, always on you technology where our attention is always divided. And i think that is the triggering technology that we dont know how to manage yet. So im actually quite the urgency is not that we give up our phones at all. Our phones are here to stay. Technology that allows us to be always in touch with each other is here to stay. But we have not developed the social mores that make sense with this technology. So, for example, the book looks back at Previous Technology as a really seductive medium. But i would never say to you, marita, hold on, give me just a second. I want to catch just two paragraphs of madame bovary. [laughter] i need to know whats happened. I need to know, you know, rudolph, emma in the cab, ill get back to you. No matter how seductive the book, weve developed ways of being with the book that sort of make sense. And we havent adopted ways of being developed ways of being with our phone that make sense. And i think its really a question that, you know, whether or not wearing it as a watch i just this afternoon was with someone who wears it as a watch. I said, okay, is your attention more focused on the people youre with . And he said, no, im always thinking of whats on my wrist. So, you know, is that a help . Is that moving forward in progress . Or is that not . So do you think of your book, i mean, we, were in agreement that it right. Has an urgent tone. Yes. Do you think it also has a kind of moral tone to it . Yes. I think well, heres my morality. Im trained in a psychodynamic tradition, im trained psychoanalytically. Im trained to think that empathy is one of the, you know, is key to our humanity. Empathy being, quite simply, the ability my ability to put myself in your shoes, imagine the world from your point of view and your ability to do the same thing for me. And really if i wanted to be briefist, i could have said, hey, for great conversation you need to be able to do that. And theres been a 40 decline in College Students in every way we know how to measure this, a 40 decline in College Students empathetic capacity in the past 20 years. And in middle schools all over the country, ive been able to observe a real problem in students ability to put just quite simply as early as middle school put themselves in the place of the other. So its natural that this should happen if people dont get practice doing the thing where empathy is bred which is by talking. I like to say that conversation is the talking cure because you learn empathy by being here, observing you, imagining, you know, and getting feedback from were empathy machines. Were meant to learn how to do that. So it sort of brings me back to my initial question, right . So its talking, its eye contact yes. Its copresence, right . Yes. But its also something unscripted, right . We dont know where its going, right . My being attentive to your telling, to where youre telling me youre going. Right. So in that sense, theres a kind of collaborative aspect to a conversation. Yes. Right . So, i mean, you have so many examples of young people saying, you know, im uncomfortable with this because i cant perfectly craft my words. Yes. I dont want to be in that office with that professor, i would rather write them an email, so im choosing my words carefully and, of course, is ironic. I dont know, most of us have had pretty difficult experiences with tone on email, and, you know . [laughter] email is sort of classically known as the medium of misunderstanding. So, but that sense that the unscriptedness is scary. Right. Right . Yes. And potentially making one more vulnerable to ones own feelings. Feelings and, you know, sense of self, right . Yes. I mean, one of i mean, its interesting you should end up on a sense of self, because one of the messages, i begin the book on conversation w