Free Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle Page B

them for another day, another meeting.
    And sometimes, I am told, they actively want to avoid the spontaneity of conversation. The desire for the edited life crosses generations, but the young consider it their birthright. A college senior doesn’t go to his professors’ office hours. He will correspond with his teachers only through email. The student explains that if he sees his professors in person, he could get something “wrong.” Ever since ninth grade, when his preparations to go to an Ivy League college began in earnest, he and his parents have worked on his getting everything “right.” If he wasn’t getting enough playing time on a team, his father went in to see the coach. When his College Board scores weren’t high enough, he had personal tutors. He had no interest in science, but his high school guidance counselor decided that a summer program in neurobiology was what he needed to round out his college application. Now he is three years through that Ivy education and hoping for law school. He is still trying to get things right. “When you talk in person,” he says, “you are likely to make a slip.”
    He thinks his no-office-hours policy is a reasonable strategy. He tells me that our culture has “zero tolerance” for making mistakes. If politicians make “slips,” it haunts them throughout their careers. And usually they make these mistakes while they are talking. He says, “I feel as though everyone in my generation wants to write things out—I certainly do—because then I can check it over and make sure it is okay. I don’t want to say a wrong thing.”
    Studying conversation today brings forth many comments like these. They encourage a fresh look at our cultural expectations of getting everything “right.” And a fresh look at what we accomplish when we communicate perfection as a value to our children. Studying conversation suggests that it is time to rediscover an interest in the spontaneous. It suggests that it is time to rediscover an interest in the points of view of those with whom we disagree. And it suggests that we slow down enough to listen to them, one at a time.
    These are not easy assignments. But I am hopeful about our moment. Some of the most “plugged in” people in America find conversation blocked and struggle for ways to reclaim it. Corporations devise strategies for workplace teams built on face-to-face meetings. They ask employees to take a break and not check their email after business hours. Or they insist that employees take a “smartphone-free” night during the business week. One CEO sets up pre-workday breakfasts where there are no phones or scheduled meetings. Others begin the day with technology-free “stand-up meetings.” There are new corporate programs for emotional self-help in an age of overconnection: I meet executives on technology “time-outs,” Sabbaths, and sabbaticals .
    Even Silicon Valley parents who work for social media companies tell me that they send their children to technology-free schools in the hope that this will give their children greater emotional and intellectual range. Many were surprised to learn that Steve Jobs did not encourage his own children’s use of iPads or iPhones. His biographer reports that in Jobs’s family, the focus was on conversation: “Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.” Our technological mandarins don’t always live the life they build for others. They go to vacation spots deemed “device-free” (that don’t allow phones, tablets, or laptops). This means that America has curious new digital divides. In our use of media, there are the haves and have-nots. And then there are those who