The Fall and Rise of Conversation
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When was the last time you had a good conversation? Not the disengaged post-smartphone version — superficial words exchanged half-distracted — but a fully present sharing of ideas, bypassing the surface level chaff to meander through deeper currents. Not a discussion of people, of who did what and how we judge them from our ivory tower, but of the momentous events that mark our lives, of the beguiling ideas that can instantly alter a life’s course and the intimate feelings we shield from the world.
For most of us the concept has become something alien; ‘an uninterrupted conversation, with no notifications, no vibrating pocket and insistent blinking LEDs…what on earth do you mean?’ It seems quaint, almost Luddite, yearning for a time consigned to antiquity by the inevitable march of technological progress. Long-form journalism flails in its death throes, we ingest our information in 140 character chunks and nuance has been systematically excised from public discourse. In the public sphere conversation has degenerated to trading soundbites, with no shared attempt to find common ground. How can we? Our beliefs are increasingly identity based, and there’s something existentially threatening about compromising our own identity. What examples do we have to follow in this post-conversation world we live in?
However, there is cause for hope. The internet has democratised spreading ideas, even as it has polarised speech. There’s a cob-webbed corner of the internet for everyone, even those Luddite fans of conversation. And they didn’t stay in the shadows for long; throughout the 2010s there was a quiet revolution, as radio declined a new form of audio-based media gradually spread into the cultural zeitgeist. It was called a podcast. You may have heard of it.
It’s hard to pinpoint when podcasts became popular. The journey from something reserved for the vanguard of early adopters to something your mum recommends you happened almost instantly. But it is clear that time was in the past. Spotify recently paid $100 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast the Joe Rogan podcast, which boasts nearly 200 million monthly downloads and consists primarily of the UFC commentator and comedian having rambling 3 hour conversations with a guest. His reach is staggering, one man comparable with the mightiest purveyors of news, but he is the antithesis of clickbait, or the 24 hour news cycle. As the media competes for a shrinking customer base in a desperate race to the bottom, claiming the new industry incentives force them to debase themselves in this way, one man and his conversation is valued at nearly half as much as the Washington Post.
There is an unmet need festering in our psyche, sufficiently prominent to colour how we experience the world, but still lurking beneath our notice. For connection, the surprising intimacy born of total engagement with another person and the intellectual pleasure of ending a conversation knowing you’re infinitesimally closer to the truth. It is a key part of the human experience, this magical, horrifying jumble of sensory input that fills our consciousness, and we should be encouraging it, educating on it and protecting it at all costs.
