Who killed conversation?...

The art of conversation is like dead, and stuff. Or at least it seems to be dying or so they have been saying for years now. I’ll text you, I’ll e-mail you; perhaps when conversation finally dies they’ll stop saying it’s dying - well the would have to wouldn’t they.

I don’t know when conversation started to die; maybe it was the television that silenced a generation, or the cinema a couple of generations before. Certainly I have to agree that in this world of social media, texting and e-mail the spoken word seems to be far less important and less generally used than it must have been at say the turn of the last century when you had to go to a telegraph station to say something silently.

Mind you, smoke signals, semaphore, signal lights and tom-toms had all been around for a while; but not generally easily accessed by the public unless you were a Red Indian or lighthouse keeper of course. Letters were the thing and they only worked if you could write and the person you were sending the letter to could read.

No, it took the coming of the mobile phone to revolutionise the way we converse. I text my daughter that her tea is ready even though she’s only two floors away in the house; it’s the only way to get her full attention. I’ve seen people in the same office e-mailing each other – hell, I’ve done it myself. There’s no doubt that it is far easier to deliver bad news by text or message – you’re fired, we are over, I’m not coming back, the dog is dead – but somehow it seems a tad insensitive. Surely good news is a face to face conversational thing even if it is on the videoconferencing phone. But no, all too often that celebratory happy birthday, well done, congratulations, my tests are clear, all go down one of the voiceless, faceless routes that we all carry around in our pockets these days.

Of course when you consider that parking is one of the top five topics of conversation among adults over 21 it’s easy to explain why conversation is becoming rare. What interesting lives we lead. Mind you, there are pockets of conversationalists still to be found. They are called women. Yes, get two women together and conversation commences; and such interesting conversation it is. Women’s top ten favourite conversation topics are: 1. Hopes and aspirations. 2. Hobbies/interests in general. 3. Music. 4. Dreams. 5. Romance. 6. Friends. 7. Travel. 8. Vacations. 9. Movies. 10. Entertainment .

Men don’t have 10 topics to talk about. Men can just about scrape three – sport, cars and car related things (like motorway junctions) and beer.

Maybe one day we’ll lose the use of our vocal chords as mind messaging through an implanted communication device takes over. Oh well, at least I’ll still have the voices in my head to talk to.