0:00:10.373,0:00:11.873 Good afternoon. 0:00:11.873,0:00:16.888 When I first got to MIT in 1978 Michael Dertouzos, 0:00:16.888,0:00:21.742 who's the head of the laboratory for computer science held a meeting. 0:00:21.742,0:00:25.741 There was a several day retreat in Endicott House Conference center. 0:00:25.741,0:00:29.060 In which he assembled the greatest minds 0:00:29.060,0:00:32.105 in computer science really at the time 0:00:32.105,0:00:37.040 to figure out the question of what people 0:00:37.040,0:00:39.623 might want to do with what was then called 0:00:39.623,0:00:41.525 home computers. 0:00:41.525,0:00:43.825 The word personal computers really hadn't 0:00:43.825,0:00:46.157 come into the lexicon yet. 0:00:46.157,0:00:48.124 Now these were the first computers that 0:00:48.124,0:00:50.023 you didn't have to build. 0:00:50.023,0:00:51.709 These were the first computers that you 0:00:51.709,0:00:53.456 could actually buy. 0:00:53.456,0:00:55.735 And these great computer scientists got together 0:00:55.735,0:00:57.673 and I was invited to the meeting 0:00:57.673,0:01:00.856 because I had begun my studies of computers and people. 0:01:00.856,0:01:04.272 They got together and they kind of gave it their best shot. 0:01:04.272,0:01:07.691 Somebody suggested the children might wanna learn to program, 0:01:07.691,0:01:11.457 listen to respectfully, maybe. 0:01:11.457,0:01:14.150 Somebody suggested that we would want to put our 0:01:14.150,0:01:19.290 address books on computers and people laughed, 0:01:19.290,0:01:23.930 and said well actually paper and pencil, little books paper was perfect for that 0:01:23.930,0:01:26.149 because most people didn't have a data base, 0:01:26.149,0:01:29.390 they had a couple of names and addresses so that didn't make a lot of sense. 0:01:31.420,0:01:35.864 Some people suggested well a calendar and actually people said well no, 0:01:35.864,0:01:38.249 I don't like using the computer for my calendar. 0:01:38.249,0:01:41.519 I really find the little Filofax is much better. 0:01:41.519,0:01:44.192 You can flip through it's much more practical. 0:01:44.192,0:01:48.833 I tell this story because I think it's very important to know, 0:01:48.833,0:01:53.571 to remember that really not that long ago, 0:01:53.571,0:02:01.324 we were trying to figure out how we would keep computers busy. 0:02:01.324,0:02:07.848 And you know, now we know that once we networked with each other. 0:02:07.848,0:02:12.936 Once computers were our portal to being with each other, 0:02:12.936,0:02:18.366 we really don't have to worry about keeping computers busy. 0:02:18.366,0:02:20.616 They keep us busy. 0:02:20.616,0:02:26.082 It's kind of as though we are their killer app. 0:02:26.082,0:02:29.290 So how does that work? 0:02:29.290,0:02:33.111 We're on our email, our games, our virtual worlds. 0:02:33.161,0:02:38.579 We text each other at family dinners, while we jog, while we drive, 0:02:38.579,0:02:41.538 we take our lives into our hands to do that 0:02:41.538,0:02:45.255 even with our kids in the back seat of the car. 0:02:45.255,0:02:48.068 We text each other at funerals, 0:02:48.068,0:02:51.875 we go to the park and we push swings with one hand 0:02:51.875,0:02:55.501 and we scroll through our messages with each other. 0:02:55.501,0:03:00.158 Lot of my research is observing families and you know, this is what I see. 0:03:00.158,0:03:05.371 The children who I interview say that their parents read them Harry Potter again. 0:03:05.371,0:03:09.704 With their right hand reading the book and the left hand scrolling through 0:03:09.704,0:03:13.121 the messages on the Blackberry. 0:03:13.121,0:03:16.605 Children describe that moment at school pickup. 0:03:16.605,0:03:20.471 They'll never tell you that they care but they describe that moment 0:03:20.471,0:03:25.651 where they come out of school you know looking for that moment of eye contact 0:03:25.651,0:03:28.809 and instead of that moment of eye contact with the parent 0:03:28.809,0:03:33.427 who after all had shown up at school pickup 0:03:33.427,0:03:41.615 that parent is looking at the iPhone looking at the smartphone and is reading mail. 0:03:42.861,0:03:49.152 So from the moment this generation of children met technology, 0:03:49.152,0:03:54.886 it was a competition and now they've grown up and today's teenagers, 0:03:54.886,0:04:03.579 this generation of children who've grown up with technology being the competition, 0:04:03.579,0:04:09.952 they now have their turn to live in a culture of distraction. 0:04:09.952,0:04:11.702 And what do they tell me? 0:04:11.702,0:04:14.403 They tell me they sleep with their cell phones. 0:04:14.403,0:04:17.319 They begin by saying, well I use it as an alarm clock, 0:04:17.319,0:04:18.678 and then they come clean and they say well actually 0:04:18.678,0:04:21.585 it's not just because I use it as an alarm clock. 0:04:21.585,0:04:26.175 They want to sleep with it just in case they get a message or they want to communicate 0:04:26.175,0:04:29.533 and then they say even when their phones are put away -- 0:04:29.533,0:04:33.670 let's say relegated to their school locker -- 0:04:33.670,0:04:36.901 they know when they have a message or a call, 0:04:36.901,0:04:42.718 they feel that, they can tell at long distance that they have a message or a call 0:04:42.718,0:04:44.592 they say they can just sense it. 0:04:44.592,0:04:51.434 Indeed adults as well as teens report that they feel their phones vibrating. 0:04:51.434,0:04:54.052 Even when they are not. 0:04:54.052,0:04:57.841 This is a well known phenomenon, it's called the phantom ring. 0:04:57.841,0:05:00.001 It's been reported all over. 0:05:00.001,0:05:03.165 When you take our phones away from us, 0:05:03.165,0:05:08.625 we become anxious, we become impossible, really. 0:05:08.625,0:05:15.465 Modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us. 0:05:15.465,0:05:20.464 So what is the arc of the story that I want to tell? 0:05:20.464,0:05:23.847 Only fifteen years ago looking at the early internet, 0:05:23.847,0:05:27.981 I felt an incredible sense of optimism. 0:05:27.981,0:05:31.303 I saw a place for identity experimentation 0:05:31.303,0:05:34.232 I called it an identity workshop, 0:05:34.232,0:05:40.547 for trying out aspects of self that were hard to experiment with in the physical real 0:05:40.547,0:05:45.548 and all of this happens and all of this is still wondrous. 0:05:45.548,0:05:50.630 But what I didn't see coming, and I like to tell my students 0:05:50.630,0:05:53.002 call me not prescient. 0:05:53.002,0:05:57.816 What I didn't see coming and what we have now is that 0:05:57.816,0:06:05.653 mobile connectivity, that world of devices always on and always on us, 0:06:05.653,0:06:13.302 would mean that we would be able basically to bail out of the physical real at anytime, 0:06:13.302,0:06:20.222 to go to all of the other places and spaces that we have available to us 0:06:20.222,0:06:22.441 and that we would want to. 0:06:22.441,0:06:26.001 One man I interviewed, who plays with his kids in the park 0:06:26.001,0:06:31.501 while he talks to his virtual mistress on iPhone, calls it the life mix. 0:06:31.501,0:06:35.070 So I guess you could say that what I'm talking about 0:06:35.070,0:06:38.208 are the perils of going from multitasking 0:06:38.208,0:06:43.176 to multi-lifing, the perils of the life mix. 0:06:43.176,0:06:48.362 Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies. 0:06:48.362,0:06:53.054 And these days there is no coyness about its aspiration 0:06:53.054,0:06:57.746 to substitute life on the screen for the other kind. 0:06:57.746,0:07:08.530 Technology is seductive when its affordences meet our human vulnerabilities. 0:07:08.530,0:07:14.813 And it turns our we are very vulnerable indeed. 0:07:14.813,0:07:19.327 We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. 0:07:19.327,0:07:22.927 Connectivity offers for many of us, 0:07:22.927,0:07:29.359 the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. 0:07:29.359,0:07:37.629 We can't get enough of each other -- if we can have each other at a distance 0:07:37.629,0:07:40.714 in amounts that we can control. 0:07:40.714,0:07:47.551 Think of Goldilocks, not too close, not too far, just right. 0:07:47.551,0:07:52.873 Connection made to measure, that's the new promise. 0:07:52.873,0:08:01.595 The ability to hide from each other even as we are continually connected to each other. 0:08:01.595,0:08:06.689 To put it too simply, we would rather text than talk. 0:08:06.689,0:08:12.260 Online connections bring so many bounties. 0:08:12.260,0:08:17.959 But our lives of continual connection also leave us vulnerable. 0:08:17.959,0:08:22.246 Often we are too busy communicating to think. 0:08:22.246,0:08:27.061 Too busy communicating to create, 0:08:27.061,0:08:31.192 too busy communicating to really connect 0:08:31.192,0:08:36.724 with the people we're with in the ways that would really count. 0:08:36.724,0:08:41.257 In continual contact, we're alone together. 0:08:41.257,0:08:47.763 To paraphrase Thoreau, where[br]do we live and what do we live for 0:08:47.763,0:08:50.001 in our new tethered lives 0:08:50.001,0:08:58.223 or in other words, what do we have,[br]now that we have what we say we want, 0:08:58.223,0:09:03.990 now that we have what technology makes easy? 0:09:03.990,0:09:09.256 In corporations, among circles of teenage and adult friends, 0:09:09.256,0:09:15.243 within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather text 0:09:15.243,0:09:19.832 or send an email than talk face to face. 0:09:19.832,0:09:23.677 Some who say I live my life on my blackberry, 0:09:23.677,0:09:28.469 are forthright about avoiding real-time commitment of a phone call. 0:09:28.469,0:09:35.245 When you text, one young man says, you have more time to think about what you're writing 0:09:35.245,0:09:38.491 on the telephone too much might show. 0:09:38.491,0:09:45.274 Here we use technology to dial down human contact and there's that Goldilocks thing. 0:09:45.274,0:09:49.455 To titrate it's nature and extent. 0:09:49.455,0:09:58.187 People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay. 0:09:58.187,0:10:00.088 And we confront a paradox. 0:10:00.088,0:10:03.531 We insist that our world is increasingly complex 0:10:03.531,0:10:06.344 yet we've created a communication's culture 0:10:06.344,0:10:10.605 that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think, 0:10:10.605,0:10:15.759 uninterrupted we've ramp up the volume and velocity of communication 0:10:15.759,0:10:18.556 but we start to expect fast answers. 0:10:18.556,0:10:22.554 And in order to get them we ask each other simpler questions, 0:10:22.554,0:10:25.839 we start to dumb down our communication, 0:10:25.839,0:10:28.231 even on the most important matters. 0:10:28.231,0:10:29.976 Shakespeare might have said, 0:10:29.976,0:10:34.840 we are consumed with that which we are nourished by. 0:10:34.840,0:10:38.919 This flood of connection affects the development of the self in many ways, 0:10:38.919,0:10:41.467 here I am just going to mention one of them. 0:10:41.467,0:10:45.476 Let's call it, I share therefore I am. 0:10:45.476,0:10:55.082 For so many I have studied, things go from I have a feeling, I want to make a call, 0:10:55.082,0:11:01.349 to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. 0:11:01.349,0:11:09.058 In other words the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it. 0:11:09.058,0:11:17.006 More than this, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone. 0:11:17.006,0:11:23.079 To gather oneself, there is a great psychological truth. 0:11:23.079,0:11:30.890 If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. 0:11:30.890,0:11:39.006 For adult and child having gotten into the habit of constant connection, 0:11:39.006,0:11:47.000 we risk losing our capacity for the kind of solitude that energizes and that restores. 0:11:47.000,0:11:49.671 So let me share some final thoughts. 0:11:49.671,0:11:55.130 First about the metaphor of addiction, which we're too apt to use. 0:11:55.130,0:12:00.589 And second, about the moment we're at and the promise it offers. 0:12:00.589,0:12:02.789 First, addiction. 0:12:02.789,0:12:06.222 People are compelled by that little red light on the blackberry 0:12:06.222,0:12:09.656 that tells them a message is waiting. 0:12:09.656,0:12:10.980 I ask them why, 0:12:10.980,0:12:16.243 and they talk about their mobile device as the place for hope in their life. 0:12:16.243,0:12:19.157 The place where something new will come to them. 0:12:19.157,0:12:22.305 The place where loneliness can be defeated. 0:12:22.305,0:12:26.556 They say things like, the phone is where the sweetness is. 0:12:26.556,0:12:33.075 We're vulnerable to the constant feelings of connection that technology offers. 0:12:33.075,0:12:35.795 We should focus on this vulnerability 0:12:35.795,0:12:39.886 because we can work on getting less vulnerable. 0:12:39.886,0:12:45.228 However apt, we can ill afford the metaphor of addiction. 0:12:45.228,0:12:48.676 Because if you're addicted you have only one solution, 0:12:48.676,0:12:51.754 you have to get rid of that substance. 0:12:51.754,0:12:56.315 And we know that we are not going to get rid of the internet, 0:12:56.315,0:12:59.739 we are not going to get rid of social networking. 0:12:59.739,0:13:04.492 We will not go cold turkey or forbid cellphones to our children. 0:13:04.492,0:13:09.790 These technologies are our current partners in the human adventure. 0:13:09.790,0:13:14.424 The notion of addiction with this one solution that we know we won't take, 0:13:14.424,0:13:17.990 makes us feel hopeless and passive. 0:13:17.990,0:13:24.264 We sense something amiss and we're at a moment of opportunity. 0:13:24.264,0:13:28.211 Every technology provides an opportunity to ask, 0:13:28.211,0:13:32.158 does it serve our human purposes? 0:13:32.158,0:13:38.077 A question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. 0:13:38.077,0:13:40.948 Just because we grew up with the internet, 0:13:40.948,0:13:45.450 we assume that the internet is all grown up. 0:13:45.450,0:13:50.581 We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity. 0:13:50.581,0:13:53.535 That the way we live now with the internet 0:13:53.535,0:13:56.967 is how we're going to live with it in the future. 0:13:56.967,0:13:58.842 And that's not true. 0:13:58.842,0:14:03.272 With the internet, it is very early days. 0:14:03.272,0:14:08.223 It is time to make the corrections and one hopeful place 0:14:08.223,0:14:13.883 is to restart some conversations we allowed to get derailed. 0:14:13.883,0:14:16.445 To take as only one example, 0:14:16.445,0:14:21.285 we close down conversations and much to our detriment. 0:14:21.285,0:14:24.655 By getting into performance mode on the network 0:14:24.655,0:14:27.779 in both our personal and our professional lives. 0:14:27.779,0:14:34.071 Personally there's been a tendency to use social networking to perform an ideal self. 0:14:34.071,0:14:38.891 Many people tell me they don't like to show flaws and vulnerabilities 0:14:38.891,0:14:42.014 or share bad news online with friends. 0:14:42.014,0:14:46.975 They say things like, it just doesn't seem like the place to talk about problems. 0:14:46.975,0:14:51.306 Not even, as one woman put it, the death of my dog. 0:14:51.306,0:14:54.002 So certainly not about more serious problems. 0:14:54.002,0:14:56.413 So the more time we spend online, 0:14:56.413,0:14:59.349 the more we keep a lot of things to ourselves. 0:14:59.349,0:15:04.628 Even as we think we're updating our status and updating our status, 0:15:04.628,0:15:06.800 and sharing ourselves with the world. 0:15:06.800,0:15:11.144 But very often we're sharing what makes us look good. 0:15:11.144,0:15:14.000 We're sharing what's easy to share. 0:15:14.000,0:15:18.341 Professionally, we also perform in our emails and memos at work. 0:15:18.341,0:15:21.374 Business people, lawyers, consultants tell me. 0:15:21.374,0:15:25.625 That in their work environments, they don't want to leave an electronic trace, 0:15:25.625,0:15:29.572 of asking for help or admitting failures and frustrations. 0:15:29.572,0:15:32.259 So we make it harder to fix problems, 0:15:32.259,0:15:34.739 we make it harder to be mentored. 0:15:34.739,0:15:38.426 So we cut off conversations in our friendships, 0:15:38.426,0:15:42.039 and we cut off conversations in our professional life 0:15:42.039,0:15:44.979 that would improve our performance on the job. 0:15:44.979,0:15:51.043 The path ahead is challenging but clear for both institutions and individuals, 0:15:51.043,0:15:53.135 for both love and money, 0:15:53.135,0:15:59.570 the next task for all of us is to restart those necessary conversations. 0:15:59.570,0:16:06.604 Instead of casual Fridays, we should all be asking for conversational Thursdays. 0:16:06.604,0:16:09.969 And that won't be a bad thing at all. 0:16:09.969,0:16:12.996 Reclaiming conversation, that's the next frontier. 0:16:12.996,0:16:14.186 Thank you. 0:16:14.186,0:16:16.282 (Applause)