Eyesight in conversation

I’m struck by how much the lockdown and social distancing is impacting on me and like most people, it’s become a bit of a preoccupation.

 

An earlier post, which  started to raise the question of how important it is to be able to see people in order to have an authentic conversation with them , triggered some interesting conversations. The post related specifically to the current use of video conferencing/’chat’ platforms  for meetings and social gatherings, but it has raised important questions (for me at least) about the apparent general acceptance of the supremacy of video over audio.

 

It feels a bit strange hearing these arguments for video when it was only until relatively recently that we managed perfectly well conducting (or supporting) everything from our friendships and closest relationships, to highly detailed work, to crisis interventions and suicide prevention on the (audio only) phone.

 

The writer and journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest book ‘Danger and strangers: the trouble with face value’ while discussing issues broader than this one, makes the point that, in face to face interactions (particularly with strangers), correctly deciphering facial expressions is not always straightforward and that we generally see what we want to in others’ expressions. In his interview on the radio last week, he was asked about these ideas in relation to video conferencing/chat communications of the moment. His response was that it is far more problematic than people like to believe and argued that verbal-only communication can avoid many of the pitfalls that the visual connections draw us into.

 

 

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