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Our culture is changing; every day more people utilize cybernetic ways to communicate which reduces the quality of our interaction. On her essay, “Sex, Lies and Conversation”, Deborah Tannen points out that intimacy is the base of relationships, but how can intimacy exist if our communication levels these days do not even involve having a face to face conversation. Since the Internet and computers became more affordable, more people are becoming part of the cybernetic world. According to Wikipedia, there are over 500 million users on the most popular social networking websites, more than half of them are under 25. This means that most of the young members of our society are growing accustomed to a different kind of communication, perhaps one of less quality.
There is no doubt that communication is being directly affected by technology; we have so many distractions around us that we hardly make the time to have a meaningful conversation. But this lack of communication caused by technology did not develop in just a few years; it took many decades and the invention of many technological gadgets to reach this point. My grandfather once told me how he and his brothers used to gather around in the living room every day after school and talk for hours while waiting on dinner to be ready. Then things slowly started to change when radio came into the picture; suddenly all the talking turned into listening. This device started to deteriorate the human interaction without people even noticing. After all, who would think that the invention of radio could increase the divorce rates in the United States.
Not too long after the radio the T.V. made its appearance, which lead to the invention of computers and video games. At that point we slowly started teaching ourselves to become listeners, slowly losing our ability to interact in a satisfactory way, and just like any other activity conversation also requires practice, and since we no longer engage in this...