WEBVTT

00:00:10.373 --> 00:00:11.873
Good afternoon.

00:00:11.873 --> 00:00:16.888
When I first got to MIT in 1978 Michael Dertouzos,

00:00:16.888 --> 00:00:21.742
who's the head of the laboratory for computer science held a meeting.

00:00:21.742 --> 00:00:25.741
There was a several day retreat in Endicott House Conference center.

00:00:25.741 --> 00:00:29.060
In which he assembled the greatest minds

00:00:29.060 --> 00:00:32.105
in computer science really at the time

00:00:32.105 --> 00:00:37.040
to figure out the question of what people

00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.623
might want to do with what was then called

00:00:39.623 --> 00:00:41.525
home computers.

00:00:41.525 --> 00:00:43.825
The word personal computers really hadn't

00:00:43.825 --> 00:00:46.157
come into the lexicon yet.

00:00:46.157 --> 00:00:48.124
Now these were the first computers that

00:00:48.124 --> 00:00:50.023
you didn't have to build.

00:00:50.023 --> 00:00:51.709
These were the first computers that you

00:00:51.709 --> 00:00:53.456
could actually buy.

00:00:53.456 --> 00:00:55.735
And these great computer scientists got together

00:00:55.735 --> 00:00:57.673
and I was invited to the meeting

00:00:57.673 --> 00:01:00.856
because I had begun my studies of computers and people.

00:01:00.856 --> 00:01:04.272
They got together and they kind of gave it their best shot.

00:01:04.272 --> 00:01:07.691
Somebody suggested the children might wanna learn to program,

00:01:07.691 --> 00:01:11.457
listen to respectfully, maybe.

00:01:11.457 --> 00:01:14.150
Somebody suggested that we would want to put our

00:01:14.150 --> 00:01:19.290
address books on computers and people laughed,

00:01:19.290 --> 00:01:23.930
and said well actually paper and pencil, little books paper was perfect for that

00:01:23.930 --> 00:01:26.149
because most people didn't have a data base,

00:01:26.149 --> 00:01:29.390
they had a couple of names and addresses so that didn't make a lot of sense.

00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:35.864
Some people suggested well a calendar and actually people said well no,

00:01:35.864 --> 00:01:38.249
I don't like using the computer for my calendar.

00:01:38.249 --> 00:01:41.519
I really find the little Filofax is much better.

00:01:41.519 --> 00:01:44.192
You can flip through it's much more practical.

00:01:44.192 --> 00:01:48.833
I tell this story because I think it's very important to know,

00:01:48.833 --> 00:01:53.571
to remember that really not that long ago,

00:01:53.571 --> 00:02:01.324
we were trying to figure out how we would keep computers busy.

00:02:01.324 --> 00:02:07.848
And you know, now we know that once we networked with each other.

00:02:07.848 --> 00:02:12.936
Once computers were our portal to being with each other,

00:02:12.936 --> 00:02:18.366
we really don't have to worry about keeping computers busy.

00:02:18.366 --> 00:02:20.616
They keep us busy.

00:02:20.616 --> 00:02:26.082
It's kind of as though we are their killer app.

00:02:26.082 --> 00:02:29.290
So how does that work?

00:02:29.290 --> 00:02:33.111
We're on our email, our games, our virtual worlds.

00:02:33.161 --> 00:02:38.579
We text each other at family dinners, while we jog, while we drive,

00:02:38.579 --> 00:02:41.538
we take our lives into our hands to do that

00:02:41.538 --> 00:02:45.255
even with our kids in the back seat of the car.

00:02:45.255 --> 00:02:48.068
We text each other at funerals,

00:02:48.068 --> 00:02:51.875
we go to the park and we push swings with one hand

00:02:51.875 --> 00:02:55.501
and we scroll through our messages with each other.

00:02:55.501 --> 00:03:00.158
Lot of my research is observing families and you know, this is what I see.

00:03:00.158 --> 00:03:05.371
The children who I interview say that their parents read them Harry Potter again.

00:03:05.371 --> 00:03:09.704
With their right hand reading the book and the left hand scrolling through

00:03:09.704 --> 00:03:13.121
the messages on the Blackberry.

00:03:13.121 --> 00:03:16.605
Children describe that moment at school pickup.

00:03:16.605 --> 00:03:20.471
They'll never tell you that they care but they describe that moment

00:03:20.471 --> 00:03:25.651
where they come out of school you know looking for that moment of eye contact

00:03:25.651 --> 00:03:28.809
and instead of that moment of eye contact with the parent

00:03:28.809 --> 00:03:33.427
who after all had shown up at school pickup

00:03:33.427 --> 00:03:41.615
that parent is looking at the iPhone looking at the smartphone and is reading mail.

00:03:42.861 --> 00:03:49.152
So from the moment this generation of children met technology,

00:03:49.152 --> 00:03:54.886
it was a competition and now they've grown up and today's teenagers,

00:03:54.886 --> 00:04:03.579
this generation of children who've grown up with technology being the competition,

00:04:03.579 --> 00:04:09.952
they now have their turn to live in a culture of distraction.

00:04:09.952 --> 00:04:11.702
And what do they tell me?

00:04:11.702 --> 00:04:14.403
They tell me they sleep with their cell phones.

00:04:14.403 --> 00:04:17.319
They begin by saying, well I use it as an alarm clock,

00:04:17.319 --> 00:04:18.678
and then they come clean and they say well actually

00:04:18.678 --> 00:04:21.585
it's not just because I use it as an alarm clock.

00:04:21.585 --> 00:04:26.175
They want to sleep with it just in case they get a message or they want to communicate

00:04:26.175 --> 00:04:29.533
and then they say even when their phones are put away --

00:04:29.533 --> 00:04:33.670
let's say relegated to their school locker --

00:04:33.670 --> 00:04:36.901
they know when they have a message or a call,

00:04:36.901 --> 00:04:42.718
they feel that, they can tell at long distance that they have a message or a call

00:04:42.718 --> 00:04:44.592
they say they can just sense it.

00:04:44.592 --> 00:04:51.434
Indeed adults as well as teens report that they feel their phones vibrating.

00:04:51.434 --> 00:04:54.052
Even when they are not.

00:04:54.052 --> 00:04:57.841
This is a well known phenomenon, it's called the phantom ring.

00:04:57.841 --> 00:05:00.001
It's been reported all over.

00:05:00.001 --> 00:05:03.165
When you take our phones away from us,

00:05:03.165 --> 00:05:08.625
we become anxious, we become impossible, really.

00:05:08.625 --> 00:05:15.465
Modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us.

00:05:15.465 --> 00:05:20.464
So what is the arc of the story that I want to tell?

00:05:20.464 --> 00:05:23.847
Only fifteen years ago looking at the early internet,

00:05:23.847 --> 00:05:27.981
I felt an incredible sense of optimism.

00:05:27.981 --> 00:05:31.303
I saw a place for identity experimentation

00:05:31.303 --> 00:05:34.232
I called it an identity workshop,

00:05:34.232 --> 00:05:40.547
for trying out aspects of self that were hard to experiment with in the physical real

00:05:40.547 --> 00:05:45.548
and all of this happens and all of this is still wondrous.

00:05:45.548 --> 00:05:50.630
But what I didn't see coming, and I like to tell my students

00:05:50.630 --> 00:05:53.002
call me not prescient.

00:05:53.002 --> 00:05:57.816
What I didn't see coming and what we have now is that

00:05:57.816 --> 00:06:05.653
mobile connectivity, that world of devices always on and always on us,

00:06:05.653 --> 00:06:13.302
would mean that we would be able basically to bail out of the physical real at anytime,

00:06:13.302 --> 00:06:20.222
to go to all of the other places and spaces that we have available to us

00:06:20.222 --> 00:06:22.441
and that we would want to.

00:06:22.441 --> 00:06:26.001
One man I interviewed, who plays with his kids in the park

00:06:26.001 --> 00:06:31.501
while he talks to his virtual mistress on iPhone, calls it the life mix.

00:06:31.501 --> 00:06:35.070
So I guess you could say that what I'm talking about

00:06:35.070 --> 00:06:38.208
are the perils of going from multitasking

00:06:38.208 --> 00:06:43.176
to multi-lifing, the perils of the life mix.

00:06:43.176 --> 00:06:48.362
Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.

00:06:48.362 --> 00:06:53.054
And these days there is no coyness about its aspiration

00:06:53.054 --> 00:06:57.746
to substitute life on the screen for the other kind.

00:06:57.746 --> 00:07:08.530
Technology is seductive when its affordences meet our human vulnerabilities.

00:07:08.530 --> 00:07:14.813
And it turns our we are very vulnerable indeed.

00:07:14.813 --> 00:07:19.327
We are lonely but fearful of intimacy.

00:07:19.327 --> 00:07:22.927
Connectivity offers for many of us,

00:07:22.927 --> 00:07:29.359
the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

00:07:29.359 --> 00:07:37.629
We can't get enough of each other -- if we can have each other at a distance

00:07:37.629 --> 00:07:40.714
in amounts that we can control.

00:07:40.714 --> 00:07:47.551
Think of Goldilocks, not too close, not too far, just right.

00:07:47.551 --> 00:07:52.873
Connection made to measure, that's the new promise.

00:07:52.873 --> 00:08:01.595
The ability to hide from each other even as we are continually connected to each other.

00:08:01.595 --> 00:08:06.689
To put it too simply, we would rather text than talk.

00:08:06.689 --> 00:08:12.260
Online connections bring so many bounties.

00:08:12.260 --> 00:08:17.959
But our lives of continual connection also leave us vulnerable.

00:08:17.959 --> 00:08:22.246
Often we are too busy communicating to think.

00:08:22.246 --> 00:08:27.061
Too busy communicating to create,

00:08:27.061 --> 00:08:31.192
too busy communicating to really connect

00:08:31.192 --> 00:08:36.724
with the people we're with in the ways that would really count.

00:08:36.724 --> 00:08:41.257
In continual contact, we're alone together.

00:08:41.257 --> 00:08:47.763
To paraphrase Thoreau, where
do we live and what do we live for

00:08:47.763 --> 00:08:50.001
in our new tethered lives

00:08:50.001 --> 00:08:58.223
or in other words, what do we have,
now that we have what we say we want,

00:08:58.223 --> 00:09:03.990
now that we have what technology makes easy?

00:09:03.990 --> 00:09:09.256
In corporations, among circles of teenage and adult friends,

00:09:09.256 --> 00:09:15.243
within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather text

00:09:15.243 --> 00:09:19.832
or send an email than talk face to face.

00:09:19.832 --> 00:09:23.677
Some who say I live my life on my blackberry,

00:09:23.677 --> 00:09:28.469
are forthright about avoiding real-time commitment of a phone call.

00:09:28.469 --> 00:09:35.245
When you text, one young man says, you have more time to think about what you're writing

00:09:35.245 --> 00:09:38.491
on the telephone too much might show.

00:09:38.491 --> 00:09:45.274
Here we use technology to dial down human contact and there's that Goldilocks thing.

00:09:45.274 --> 00:09:49.455
To titrate it's nature and extent.

00:09:49.455 --> 00:09:58.187
People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay.

00:09:58.187 --> 00:10:00.088
And we confront a paradox.

00:10:00.088 --> 00:10:03.531
We insist that our world is increasingly complex

00:10:03.531 --> 00:10:06.344
yet we've created a communication's culture

00:10:06.344 --> 00:10:10.605
that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think,

00:10:10.605 --> 00:10:15.759
uninterrupted we've ramp up the volume and velocity of communication

00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:18.556
but we start to expect fast answers.

00:10:18.556 --> 00:10:22.554
And in order to get them we ask each other simpler questions,

00:10:22.554 --> 00:10:25.839
we start to dumb down our communication,

00:10:25.839 --> 00:10:28.231
even on the most important matters.

00:10:28.231 --> 00:10:29.976
Shakespeare might have said,

00:10:29.976 --> 00:10:34.840
we are consumed with that which we are nourished by.

00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:38.919
This flood of connection affects the development of the self in many ways,

00:10:38.919 --> 00:10:41.467
here I am just going to mention one of them.

00:10:41.467 --> 00:10:45.476
Let's call it, I share therefore I am.

00:10:45.476 --> 00:10:55.082
For so many I have studied, things go from I have a feeling, I want to make a call,

00:10:55.082 --> 00:11:01.349
to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.

00:11:01.349 --> 00:11:09.058
In other words the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it.

00:11:09.058 --> 00:11:17.006
More than this, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone.

00:11:17.006 --> 00:11:23.079
To gather oneself, there is a great psychological truth.

00:11:23.079 --> 00:11:30.890
If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely.

00:11:30.890 --> 00:11:39.006
For adult and child having gotten into the habit of constant connection,

00:11:39.006 --> 00:11:47.000
we risk losing our capacity for the kind of solitude that energizes and that restores.

00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:49.671
So let me share some final thoughts.

00:11:49.671 --> 00:11:55.130
First about the metaphor of addiction, which we're too apt to use.

00:11:55.130 --> 00:12:00.589
And second, about the moment we're at and the promise it offers.

00:12:00.589 --> 00:12:02.789
First, addiction.

00:12:02.789 --> 00:12:06.222
People are compelled by that little red light on the blackberry

00:12:06.222 --> 00:12:09.656
that tells them a message is waiting.

00:12:09.656 --> 00:12:10.980
I ask them why,

00:12:10.980 --> 00:12:16.243
and they talk about their mobile device as the place for hope in their life.

00:12:16.243 --> 00:12:19.157
The place where something new will come to them.

00:12:19.157 --> 00:12:22.305
The place where loneliness can be defeated.

00:12:22.305 --> 00:12:26.556
They say things like, the phone is where the sweetness is.

00:12:26.556 --> 00:12:33.075
We're vulnerable to the constant feelings of connection that technology offers.

00:12:33.075 --> 00:12:35.795
We should focus on this vulnerability

00:12:35.795 --> 00:12:39.886
because we can work on getting less vulnerable.

00:12:39.886 --> 00:12:45.228
However apt, we can ill afford the metaphor of addiction.

00:12:45.228 --> 00:12:48.676
Because if you're addicted you have only one solution,

00:12:48.676 --> 00:12:51.754
you have to get rid of that substance.

00:12:51.754 --> 00:12:56.315
And we know that we are not going to get rid of the internet,

00:12:56.315 --> 00:12:59.739
we are not going to get rid of social networking.

00:12:59.739 --> 00:13:04.492
We will not go cold turkey or forbid cellphones to our children.

00:13:04.492 --> 00:13:09.790
These technologies are our current partners in the human adventure.

00:13:09.790 --> 00:13:14.424
The notion of addiction with this one solution that we know we won't take,

00:13:14.424 --> 00:13:17.990
makes us feel hopeless and passive.

00:13:17.990 --> 00:13:24.264
We sense something amiss and we're at a moment of opportunity.

00:13:24.264 --> 00:13:28.211
Every technology provides an opportunity to ask,

00:13:28.211 --> 00:13:32.158
does it serve our human purposes?

00:13:32.158 --> 00:13:38.077
A question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are.

00:13:38.077 --> 00:13:40.948
Just because we grew up with the internet,

00:13:40.948 --> 00:13:45.450
we assume that the internet is all grown up.

00:13:45.450 --> 00:13:50.581
We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity.

00:13:50.581 --> 00:13:53.535
That the way we live now with the internet

00:13:53.535 --> 00:13:56.967
is how we're going to live with it in the future.

00:13:56.967 --> 00:13:58.842
And that's not true.

00:13:58.842 --> 00:14:03.272
With the internet, it is very early days.

00:14:03.272 --> 00:14:08.223
It is time to make the corrections and one hopeful place

00:14:08.223 --> 00:14:13.883
is to restart some conversations we allowed to get derailed.

00:14:13.883 --> 00:14:16.445
To take as only one example,

00:14:16.445 --> 00:14:21.285
we close down conversations and much to our detriment.

00:14:21.285 --> 00:14:24.655
By getting into performance mode on the network

00:14:24.655 --> 00:14:27.779
in both our personal and our professional lives.

00:14:27.779 --> 00:14:34.071
Personally there's been a tendency to use social networking to perform an ideal self.

00:14:34.071 --> 00:14:38.891
Many people tell me they don't like to show flaws and vulnerabilities

00:14:38.891 --> 00:14:42.014
or share bad news online with friends.

00:14:42.014 --> 00:14:46.975
They say things like, it just doesn't seem like the place to talk about problems.

00:14:46.975 --> 00:14:51.306
Not even, as one woman put it, the death of my dog.

00:14:51.306 --> 00:14:54.002
So certainly not about more serious problems.

00:14:54.002 --> 00:14:56.413
So the more time we spend online,

00:14:56.413 --> 00:14:59.349
the more we keep a lot of things to ourselves.

00:14:59.349 --> 00:15:04.628
Even as we think we're updating our status and updating our status,

00:15:04.628 --> 00:15:06.800
and sharing ourselves with the world.

00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:11.144
But very often we're sharing what makes us look good.

00:15:11.144 --> 00:15:14.000
We're sharing what's easy to share.

00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:18.341
Professionally, we also perform in our emails and memos at work.

00:15:18.341 --> 00:15:21.374
Business people, lawyers, consultants tell me.

00:15:21.374 --> 00:15:25.625
That in their work environments, they don't want to leave an electronic trace,

00:15:25.625 --> 00:15:29.572
of asking for help or admitting failures and frustrations.

00:15:29.572 --> 00:15:32.259
So we make it harder to fix problems,

00:15:32.259 --> 00:15:34.739
we make it harder to be mentored.

00:15:34.739 --> 00:15:38.426
So we cut off conversations in our friendships,

00:15:38.426 --> 00:15:42.039
and we cut off conversations in our professional life

00:15:42.039 --> 00:15:44.979
that would improve our performance on the job.

00:15:44.979 --> 00:15:51.043
The path ahead is challenging but clear for both institutions and individuals,

00:15:51.043 --> 00:15:53.135
for both love and money,

00:15:53.135 --> 00:15:59.570
the next task for all of us is to restart those necessary conversations.

00:15:59.570 --> 00:16:06.604
Instead of casual Fridays, we should all be asking for conversational Thursdays.

00:16:06.604 --> 00:16:09.969
And that won't be a bad thing at all.

00:16:09.969 --> 00:16:12.996
Reclaiming conversation, that's the next frontier.

00:16:12.996 --> 00:16:14.186
Thank you.

00:16:14.186 --> 00:16:16.282
(Applause)