Will future become devoid of conversation?

For good reason, a lot of us worry about a growth in incivility we’ve witnessed in a world more connected than ever through advances in technology.

Isn’t it strange that at a time when we have more capacity to deliver information than ever before, we’ve managed to diminish the actual quality of that communication?

There’s a whole lot of talking going on and a whole lot of people who don’t care to listen. The biblical book of James 1:19 has a recommendation I know I can benefit from heeding more. It suggests “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

Social media’s instantaneous communication is incredible, but it also inspires vitriol and disrespect beyond what most people will engage in when they’re standing face to face in conversation. It’s unspoken mantra could be “Everyone should be quick to give their opinion, slow to consider other’s perspectives and quick to react in anger.”

Remember Rodney King, who had been beaten by police officers in Los Angeles, pleading for calm amid the riots that followed acquittal of those officers? “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all just get along?” In the 26 years since he asked that question, the answer often appears to be “no.”

Occasionally as I drive through neighborhoods in Fayetteville, where I live, or Springdale, where my office is, I gaze with admiration when I come across two or three people sitting on a porch having a conversation. The other day, I saw two guys who had pulled kitchen table chairs out onto the driveway. They sat there visiting. I have no idea what they were talking about, but they were talking with each other, not texting or posting messages at each other.

They probably had smartphones in their pockets, but at that moment, they were engaged in an entirely untechnological practice: One talks, the other listens, then the roles reverse, and so on.

When I was a kid, my parents hauled my brothers and me every couple of weeks down to Rye, a rural community in Cleveland County a little northeast of Warren. My mom’s parents lived alongside a gravel road in a wood-frame house that had a small porch at the front, big enough for two Adirondack chairs and a two-person porch swing suspended by chains.

It was almost too much for a kid to take, but my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles would sit around on that porch talking about what was happening in the world, from their own lives and from the news they read. They sometimes debated, sometimes philosophized, and sometimes just caught up on silly and serious things.

A good Sunday afternoon was just hanging out there, the talk interrupted every so often to wave at a passing car that kicked up a momentary dust trail that, on good days, blew away from the house. And people weren’t afraid of the occasional silence, when one could gather his thoughts and ponder someone else’s.

As much as I worry about incivility, I think I worry more about disconnectedness. Over time, people or algorithms tend to customize their social media

news feeds so that people living next to each other nonetheless get starkly different information. I’m biased, naturally, but when newspapers

showed up on most people’s doorsteps each morning and the same collection of local, state, national and world stories appeared, at least neighbors had a common foundation of knowledge from which to begin their conversations. Without that, conversations about important issues can sound as though people

are speaking in different languages. The common ground is hard to discover when its very existence is in question.

I don’t believe technology and social media are bad things. I love the brilliant advances that benefit our daily lives in so many ways. I wonder, though, if we’re still in our

infancy in terms of how to manage it. And will we be able to recover the lost art of conversation when it becomes clear that its loss will be detrimental to our well-being?

People who don’t talk to each other may feel like they’re getting along, but that’s artificial. We’re really getting somewhere when we

can talk with someone who has different ideas and still call him or her a friend.

Greg Harton is editorial page editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Contact him by email at gharton@nwadg.com or on Twitter @ NWAGreg.