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Good afternoon.

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When I first got to MIT in 1978 Michael Dertouzos,

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who's the head of the laboratory for computer science held a meeting.

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There was a several day retreat in Endicott House Conference center.

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In which he assembled the greatest minds

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in computer science really at the time

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to figure out the question of what people

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might want to do with what was then called

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home computers.

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The word personal computers really hadn't

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come into the lexicon yet.

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Now these were the first computers that

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you didn't have to build.

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These were the first computers that you

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could actually buy.

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And these great computer scientists got together

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and I was invited to the meeting

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because I had begun my studies of computers and people.

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They got together and they kind of gave it their best shot.

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Somebody suggested the children might wanna learn to program,

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listen to respectfully, maybe.

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Somebody suggested that we would want to put our

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address books on computers and people laughed,

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and said well actually paper and pencil, little books paper was perfect for that

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because most people didn't have a data base,

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they had a couple of names and addresses so that didn't make a lot of sense.

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Some people suggested well a calendar and actually people said well no,

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I don't like using the computer for my calendar.

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I really find the little Filofax is much better.

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You can flip through it's much more practical.

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I tell this story because I think it's very important to know,

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to remember that really not that long ago,

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we were trying to figure out how we would keep computers busy.

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And you know, now we know that once we networked with each other.

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Once computers were our portal to being with each other,

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we really don't have to worry about keeping computers busy.

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They keep us busy.

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It's kind of as though we are their killer app.

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So how does that work?

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We're on our email, our games, our virtual worlds.

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We text each other at family dinners, while we jog, while we drive,

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we take our lives into our hands to do that

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even with our kids in the back seat of the car.

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We text each other at funerals,

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we go to the park and we push swings with one hand

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and we scroll through our messages with each other.

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Lot of my research is observing families and you know, this is what I see.

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The children who I interview say that their parents read them Harry Potter again.

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With their right hand reading the book and the left hand scrolling through

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the messages on the Blackberry.

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Children describe that moment at school pickup.

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They'll never tell you that they care but they describe that moment

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where they come out of school you know looking for that moment of eye contact

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and instead of that moment of eye contact with the parent

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who after all had shown up at school pickup

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that parent is looking at the iPhone looking at the smartphone and is reading mail.

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So from the moment this generation of children met technology,

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it was a competition and now they've grown up and today's teenagers,

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this generation of children who've grown up with technology being the competition,

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they now have their turn to live in a culture of distraction.

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And what do they tell me?

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They tell me they sleep with their cell phones.

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They begin by saying, well I use it as an alarm clock,

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and then they come clean and they say well actually

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it's not just because I use it as an alarm clock.

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They want to sleep with it just in case they get a message or they want to communicate

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and then they say even when their phones are put away --

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let's say relegated to their school locker --

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they know when they have a message or a call,

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they feel that, they can tell at long distance that they have a message or a call

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they say they can just sense it.

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Indeed adults as well as teens report that they feel their phones vibrating.

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Even when they are not.

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This is a well known phenomenon, it's called the phantom ring.

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It's been reported all over.

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When you take our phones away from us,

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we become anxious, we become impossible, really.

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Modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us.

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So what is the arc of the story that I want to tell?

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Only fifteen years ago looking at the early internet,

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I felt an incredible sense of optimism.

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I saw a place for identity experimentation

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I called it an identity workshop,

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for trying out aspects of self that were hard to experiment with in the physical real

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and all of this happens and all of this is still wondrous.

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But what I didn't see coming, and I like to tell my students

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call me not prescient.

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What I didn't see coming and what we have now is that

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mobile connectivity, that world of devices always on and always on us,

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would mean that we would be able basically to bail out of the physical real at anytime,

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to go to all of the other places and spaces that we have available to us

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and that we would want to.

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One man I interviewed, who plays with his kids in the park

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while he talks to his virtual mistress on iPhone, calls it the life mix.

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So I guess you could say that what I'm talking about

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are the perils of going from multitasking

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to multi-lifing, the perils of the life mix.

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Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.

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And these days there is no coyness about its aspiration

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to substitute life on the screen for the other kind.

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Technology is seductive when its affordences meet our human vulnerabilities.

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And it turns our we are very vulnerable indeed.

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We are lonely but fearful of intimacy.

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Connectivity offers for many of us,

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the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

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We can't get enough of each other -- if we can have each other at a distance

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in amounts that we can control.

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Think of Goldilocks, not too close, not too far, just right.

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Connection made to measure, that's the new promise.

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The ability to hide from each other even as we are continually connected to each other.

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To put it too simply, we would rather text than talk.

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Online connections bring so many bounties.

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But our lives of continual connection also leave us vulnerable.

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Often we are too busy communicating to think.

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Too busy communicating to create,

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too busy communicating to really connect

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with the people we're with in the ways that would really count.

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In continual contact, we're alone together.

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To paraphrase the row, where do we live and what do we live for

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in our new tethered lives

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or in other words, what do we have, now that we have what we say we want,

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now that we have what technology makes easy?

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In corporations, among circles of teenage and adult friends,

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within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather text

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or send an email than talk face to face.

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Some who say I live my life on my blackberry,

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are forthright about avoiding real-time commitment of a phone call.

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When you text, one young man says, you have more time to think about what you're writing

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on the telephone too much might show.

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Here we use technology to dial down human contact and there's that Goldilocks thing.

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To titrate it's nature and extent.

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People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay.

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And we confront a paradox.

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We insist that our world is increasingly complex

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yet we've created a communication's culture

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that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think,

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uninterrupted we've ramp up the volume and velocity of communication

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but we start to expect fast answers.

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And in order to get them we ask each other simpler questions,

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we start to dumb down our communication,

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even on the most important matters.

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Shakespeare might have said,

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we are consumed with that which we are nourished by.

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This flood of connection affects the development of the self in many ways,

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here I am just going to mention one of them.

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Let's call it, I share therefore I am.

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For so many I have studied, things go from I have a feeling, I want to make a call,

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to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.

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In other words the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it.

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More than this, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone.

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To gather oneself, there is a great psychological truth.

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If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely.

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For adult and child having gotten into the habit of constant connection,

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we risk losing our capacity for the kind of solitude that energizes and that restores.

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So let me share some final thoughts.

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First about the metaphor of addiction, which we're too apt to use.

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And second, about the moment we're at and the promise it offers.

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First, addiction.

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People are compelled by that little red light on the blackberry

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that tells them a message is waiting.

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I ask them why,

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and they talk about their mobile device as the place for hope in their life.

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The place where something new will come to them.

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The place where loneliness can be defeated.

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They say things like, the phone is where the sweetness is.

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We're vulnerable to the constant feelings of connection that technology offers.

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We should focus on this vulnerability

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because we can work on getting less vulnerable.

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However apt, we can ill afford the metaphor of addiction.

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Because if you're addicted you have only one solution,

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you have to get rid of that substance.

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And we know that we are not going to get rid of the internet,

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we are not going to get rid of social networking.

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We will not go cold turkey or forbid cellphones to our children.

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These technologies are our current partners in the human adventure.

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The notion of addiction with this one solution that we know we won't take,

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makes us feel hopeless and passive.

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We sense something amiss and we're at a moment of opportunity.

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Every technology provides an opportunity to ask,

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does it serve our human purposes?

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A question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are.

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Just because we grew up with the internet,

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we assume that the internet is all grown up.

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We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity.

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That the way we live now with the internet

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is how we're going to live with it in the future.

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And that's not true.

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With the internet, it is very early days.

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It is time to make the corrections and one hopeful place

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is to restart some conversations we allowed to get derailed.

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To take as only one example,

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we close down conversations and much to our detriment.

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By getting into performance mode on the network

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in both our personal and our professional lives.

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Personally there's been a tendency to use social networking to perform an ideal self.

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Many people tell me they don't like to show flaws and vulnerabilities

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or share bad news online with friends.

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They say things like, it just doesn't seem like the place to talk about problems.

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Not even, as one woman put it, the death of my dog.

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So certainly not about more serious problems.

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So the more time we spend online,

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the more we keep a lot of things to ourselves.

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Even as we think we're updating our status and updating our status,

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and sharing ourselves with the world.

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But very often we're sharing what makes us look good.

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We're sharing what's easy to share.

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Professionally, we also perform in our emails and memos at work.

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Business people, lawyers, consultants tell me.

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That in their work environments, they don't want to leave an electronic trace,

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of asking for help or admitting failures and frustrations.

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So we make it harder to fix problems,

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we make it harder to be mentored.

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So we cut off conversations in our friendships,

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and we cut off conversations in our professional life

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that would improve our performance on the job.

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The path ahead is challenging but clear for both institutions and individuals,

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for both love and money,

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the next task for all of us is to restart those necessary conversations.

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Instead of casual Fridays, we should all be asking for conversational Thursdays.

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And that won't be a bad thing at all.

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Reclaiming conversation, that's the next frontier.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)