“In a time in which the ways we communicate and connect are constantly changing, and not always for the better, Sherry Turkle provides a much needed voice of caution and reason to help explain what the f*** is going on.” —Aziz Ansari, author of Modern Romance 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. Turkle's latest book, The Empathy Diaries (3/2/21) is available now.

We live in a world where social interaction is increasingly mediated by technological devices. In this book, Ian Hutchby explores the impact these technologies have on our attempts to communicate. Focusing on four examples - telephones, computerized expert systems at work, speech-based systems dealing with enquiries from the public, and multi-user spaces on the Internet - Hutchby asks: are we increasingly technologized conversationalists, or is technology increasingly conversationalized? Conversation and Technology draws on recent theory and empirical research in conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and the social construction of technology. In novel contributions to each of these areas, Hutchby argues that the ways in which we interact can be profoundly shaped by technological media, while at the same time we ourselves are shapers of both the cultural and interactional properties of these technologies. The book begins by examining a variety of theoretical perspectives on this issue. Hutchby offers a critical appraisal of recent sociological thinking, which has tended to over-estimate society's influence on technological development. Instead he calls for a new appreciation of the relationship between human communication and technology. Using a range of case studies to illustrate his argument, Hutchby explores the multiplicity of ways in which technology affects our ordinary conversational practices. Readers in areas as diverse as sociology, communication studies, psychology, computer science and management studies will find much of interest in this account of the human and communicative properties of various forms of modern communication technology.

Discourse, Dialogue and Technology Enhanced Learning is invaluable to all those wanting to explore how dialogic processes work and how we facilitate them. Dialogue is an important learning tool and it is by understanding how language affects us and how we use language to encourage, empathise, inquire, argue and persuade that we come closer to understanding processes of change in ourselves and our society. Most researchers in Education will find themselves interpreting some form of data in the form of words; whether these words be explanations, conversations, narrations, reflections, debates or interviews and whether they are conducted through digital media or face-to-face. Discourse, textual or spoken, is therefore central to researching education. Each chapter focuses on the ways in which alternative levels of discourse analysis provide tools for the researcher, enabling insights into the way language works in learning, teaching practice and wider society. Drawing on the author’s own ‘DISCOUNT’ discourse analysis coding scheme and including a wide range of dialogue examples, this book covers: Why Dialogue? The Role of Dialogue in Education. Debate: Learning to Argue and Arguing to Learn Towards Meaning-Making: Inquiry, Narrative and Experience The Role of the Significant Other: Facilitation, Scaffolding and Mediation Inclusion, Collaboration and Community Media, Mode and Digital Literacy Researching Voices and Texts Discourse, Dialogue and Technology Enhanced Learning will be an essential resource for all students, educators and educational researchers who have an interest in the role of discourse in educational contexts.

Childhood is increasingly saturated by technology: from television to the Internet, video games to 'video nasties', camcorders to personal computers. Children, Technology and Culture looks at the interplay of children and technology which poses critical questions for how we understand the nature of childhood in late modern society. This collection brings together researchers from a range of disciplines to address the following four aspects of this relationship between children and technology: *children's access to technologies and the implications for social relationships *the structural contexts of children's engagement with technologies with a focus on gender and the family *the situatedness of children's interactions with technological objects *the constitution of children and childhood through the mediations of technology _ This book represents a substantial contribution to contemporary social scientific thinking both about the nature of children and childhood, the social impacts of technologies and the various relationships between the two.

Technologies that electronically mediate conversation, such as text-based chat or desktop video conferencing, draw on theories of human−human interaction to make predictions about the effects of design decisions. This lecture reviews the theory that has been most influential in this area: Clark's theory of language use. The key concept in Clark's theory is that of common ground. Language is viewed as a collaborative activity that uses existing common ground to develop further common ground and, hence, to communicate efficiently. The theory (a) defines different kinds of common ground, (b) formalizes the notion of collaborative activity as a “joint action,” and (c) describes the processes by which common ground is developed through joint action. Chapter 1 explains why a purely cognitive model of communication is not enough and what is meant by the phrase “collaborative activity.” Chapter 2 introduces the idea of common ground and how it is used in language through an example of two people conversing over a video link. Chapter 3 indicates where the interested reader can find out about the antecedents to Clark's theory. Chapter 4 sets out the fundamental concepts in Clark's theory. Chapter 5 uses five published case studies of electronically mediated communication to illustrate the value of the theory. These include studies of a computer-supported meeting room (Cognoter), a video tunnel that supports gaze awareness, video conferencing in medical consultation, and text chat. Table of Contents: Motivation - Conversation as a Collaborative Activity / Overview - Developing Common Ground, An Example / Scientific Foundations / The Theory in More Detail / Case Studies - Applying the Theory to Electronically Mediated Communication / Current Status