I’d like to talk about talking.

About six years ago I was in a restaurant at Bondi Beach. Just as the menus arrived so did a couple in their twenties. They were seated at the window table opposite and after about fifteen minutes the man brought out a box containing a ring and proposed. There were some tears, some kissing and some conversation, which went on for maybe two minutes.

Then there was a rather awkward silence and each reached for their mobile phone. The next hour or so, until the bill arrived, was spent frantically texting, telling friends and family the happy news, I presume.

I think we can excuse this couple, up to a point, but what really concerns me is the increasing numbers of people – husbands and wives, couples, friends and rooms full of strangers that use mobiles to hide from each other or prevent communication. You can see this everywhere – in cafes, on buses, at the beach, at conferences – and once you see it it’s very hard to stop seeing it.

It’s as though talking to someone, even someone we know very well, has become too difficult without digital filters or perhaps it’s that information about what’s happening elsewhere has created in us a fear of missing out, which means we are never fully present anywhere or with anyone.

In short, we are becoming ill at ease in the physical presence of other human beings and when we do communicate face to face with other people it is only with the tacit acknowledgement that our mobiles are left switched on and that any conversation may be interrupted at any moment.

This is fine on one level, but surely what we are saying here is that any device, or more specifically any information conveyed on that device, is more important than the person we are physically with, which can make us rather insecure.

In other words, while we believe that mobile devices facilitate connection, in reality they are doing the opposite. Modern communications are destroying meaningful communication. They are also isolating us from each other and the world at large. On trains and buses we no longer look out of the windows, but look down at our knees. Prams, which interestingly look outwards nowadays from the child’s perspective, are pushed by parents connected not with their child, who is right there in front of them, but with other people who are not.

I’m sure we are all familiar with the number of people worldwide that now own mobile devices. In the UK, almost 10% of five year olds now own a mobile phone. By age ten it’s 75%. But the word ‘phone’ is rather misleading.

Using a phone to speak to someone is becoming the exception. Globally, communicating via voice is falling through the floor, while communicating via data (text and pictures essentially) is going through the roof. Text became popular because it was cheap, but we soon worked out that text-based communication offered a greater level of control too.
We can choose when to respond to a text message or to totally ignore it.

Does this matter? I think that it does on some levels, because with text it’s very difficult to convey tone and even if you do pick up a phone to talk, it’s impossible to pick up on body language. Using something like Skype or Facetime can improve the situation slightly, but even here we can lose important elements of communication due to poor visual representation. According to some commentators, once we step away from physical face-to-face communication, we can lose as much as 90% of the clues that reveal the unspoken intentions or feelings of the other person.

So yes, we are communicating more than ever before, which is a good thing, but I wonder how much of substance is being said and, critically, how much is really being listened to or understood.

Left unchecked, this situation may result in a growth of major misunderstandings and mistakes. At the extreme, it might mean we all become increasingly fragile, nervous and insecure, partly because large parts of our identities will have been created externally by the affirmation and validation of others and will be subject to the whims of the weak ties found on our online networks.

I share therefore I am. Nobody has ‘liked’ my photographs, therefore I do not exist.

I think there are essentially three broad themes here.

The first, as I’ve said, has to do with how communicating by text in various forms is different to communicating face to face and may be resulting in a decline of empathy, an increase in fragility and the growth of misunderstanding.

Don’t get me wrong. I text. I email. I Skype. All of these technologies are very useful, but in my view, all should only be used to enhance, not replace, face to face communication and relationships.

The second theme has to do with interruption. We have somehow become uncomfortable with ourselves and others to the point where we can never be alone long enough to dig deep into our souls due to various flashes, vibrations, beeps, pings and rings.

Why might this be so? How can it be that a brief two-line text can be more alluring than the person seated opposite in a fancy restaurant in Bondi, the one with whom you plan to share the rest of your life?

I think the answer has to do with our Stone Age brains.

When we receive messages or mail someone is thinking about us. We feel important, wanted or at least feel as though we exist.We also feel good about ourselves because each tiny communication is accompanied by an attachment in the form of a shot of dopamine, which as you probably know, is a pleasure chemical released by the brain to reward certain kinds of behaviour. And guess what? The dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is a bit of a tease, modest enough to intrigue, but not large enough to satisfy.

Also, when we receive information through our mobile devices it’s essentially unpredictable, which is again alluring. If we knew the character of a tweet or text in advance, it obviously wouldn’t be interesting. It’s as though every incoming update or message is the sequel to the best TV series we’ve ever seen and we still don’t know how it ends. Hardly surprising, in this context, that a company built on 140 characters or less can be worth $27 billion.

The third theme, and it’s intimately connected with the first two, is thinking.

Clearly we are becoming very good at finding things very fast. To have the world’s information at our fingertips is a wonderful thing. It’s become easier to share things, especially ideas and information. I’m excited about this. The prospects of increasing collaboration, not only in science, but in politics, media and just about everything else is a wonderful development.

But my worry is deep thinking.

Screens, as I’ve said, are great for finding, filtering and evolving things, but I think the price we are paying for this is the erosion of sustained, focused, contextual and reflective thought. In other words, deep thinking.

Part of the problem here is simply finding enough quiet time to really think. Another is finding inputs that are original. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of information around and some is original. But because we are in a constant rush, we end up doing what’s most convenient, which is looking in the same place, which is page one of Google results.

Using an internet search to look up the telephone number of Icebergs restaurant in Bondi is absolutely fine, but if we are trying to increase the sum of all human knowledge then surely we shouldn’t all be looking in the same place. If it’s that easy, don’t do it.