Most interesting conversation?
Over our morning coffee, Mrs. D and I were revising our earliest Internet days, part of which involved a rather scholarly study of how the world was redefining the meaning of the word "here." This was circa 1992-95... and we were looking at what it actually "means" to say something like "I am IN a group" in a virtual context. Where is 'in," exactly?
This lead to talking a bit about a paper Mrs. D is currently working on, relating to trauma and processing emotions in the "texting generation." How do we interpret emotion when we only have text to look at, not an actual person who is giving us non-verbal cues, body language and more? And how is the ability to read body language being influenced in a generation that more often than not doesn't communicate in physical space?
Yes, we take things "lightly," around here...🤣
That sounds like an interesting conversation :)
I think that in the last 30 years, we have progressed not only into redefining "here" as a far less physical space, but actually making ourselves believe that a digital space is indeed a place. Tokenization is going to be massive for a reason.
These are topics that I am interested in too, as you likely are aware. In terms of the last one, go to a place where 15 year olds hang out and see them talk with each other. There is often almost no true eye contact, nothing intimate - they are always looking over each other's shoulders for the next thing of interest.
In terms of the influence of being able to read body language, I will throw an idea out there that I have considered a fair bit in terms of how gullible people have become. This is important because when you are unable to tell if someone is lying or not, the chances for getting into situations where there is violence or something like sexual abuse, goes up dramatically.