Over the past ten years, it seems clear that mobile phone have affected the art of conversation.

But before I go on, I want to stress that there is an intrinsic difference between the "art of conversation" and the "art of communication". The "art of conversation" is the ability to generate and/ or sustain prolonged mutual and intelligible dialog with another entity (normally a human!). This differs with the "art of communication" which is the ability to present one's ideas clearly and in a way that suits the audience one is addressing and within the context one is communicating. Often these are confused, and mobile phone technology is blamed for the degradation of communicative abilities, whereas it's really had a 'negative' affect on our conversations (in that we do less conversing).

Ok, now we can see the wood from the trees, I do agree that mobile phones have affected our ability to converse with one another. I would also say that it has had a "negative" effect on the art of conversation. And by this I mean that with the advent of mobile phones, a great percent of what we would have communicated via word of mouth can, and often is, replaced by a text message, email or fax - sent via one's mobile. In this sense, the use of mobile phones has meant that we spend a proportionally less amount of time talking to one another, and so in these cases the art of conversation cannot be invoked. Obviously we still do talk to one another and indeed some use their mobiles to talk at length, I'm just saying with the effective alternatives that they provide, we talk (or use the art of conversation) less.

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Mobile phones may have caused us to talk less, but they have achieved their goal of causing us to communicate better (otherwise we wouldn't use them!). Now, for example, instead of having to (and I stress HAVING TO) call someone via land-line or from a telephone booth to communicate that

"there's been change of plan, we are meeting at 8pm",

one can simply in a text message write: "chg of pln - meeting @ 8" (or with whatever variation of abbreviations you like) and the person you are texting will know exactly what you mean. I dunno, maybe I just live a busy life - but if I really wanted to, my mobile does still give me the chance to dial my friend's number and communicate the same message in the more verbose fashion, which in itself is perfectly fine, just slightly more hassle!

And so to wrap up - yes, mobile phone's has affected the art of conversation - in that they provide us a different method of communication. But at the end of the day we all choose the way we think is best to communicate, and if it's via text, email, fax, or even speech... great!

Learn more about this author, Perry Lloyd Gollo.
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