I Can See it in Your Eyes

When I write these articles, I try to imagine that I’m speaking directly to YOU, the reader. I hear my voice speaking the written words in my mind, and I picture you- one moment a man, then a woman, lighter, darker, older, younger- nodding, smiling reflexively, maybe laughing. I am connecting with an imaginary you as my audience, and my brain positions it as a one-to-one conversation between friends.

I like that, and I think it comes out in my writing and that of other people whose expressive voices I especially enjoy- I feel like I’m having a conversation with them, or they’re telling ME something that matters to them. 

In either case, my mind frames these interactions as face to face contact, because this has been the default setting for sharing most communication for hundreds of thousands of years. This isn’t an anachronistic pining for “the good old days”- this is a plea to take a hard, honest look at the way our minds and bodies are designed as humans, and realize the further from direct contact that we mediate our interactions, the more fidelity, value, and social cohesion we lose in those interactions. Our minds are wired- a process which most believe took hundreds of thousands of years- to look at another human’s face, speak words, convert those words to meaning, and respond with a combination of our own words and a complex array of facial and body movements adding even more content to our interaction.

An amazing thing happens when two humans communicate face to face: their brains synchronize, meaning the neural networks of both people begin activating in the same ways, at the same intensity, at the exact same time- like a perfectly-practiced chorus or orchestra, or two hands on a single body. This doesn’t happen under ANY other conditions of communication that have been tested so far: if you’re not looking at each other and taking turns communicating (i.e. a dialogue), no synchronization. 

I love this study, even if the neuroscience in the report makes it a very heavy read. It reminds me that however positively communications technologies have changed our lives and transformed our civilization, they’re nearly always an imperfect use of our natural equipment for communicating and creating meaningful social bonds.

In surveys, doctors overwhelmingly prefer having as many opportunities for face to face interaction with their patients, even when remote medicine reduces their workload. They widely agree that direct contact is incredibly diagnostically useful when considering how much of human expression- especially about the way we feel, physically or emotionally, is nonverbal. We don’t have to be trained professionals or psychics to observe and interpret body language and tiny changes in scent, posture, breathing, or heart rate- we naturally and instinctively process the vast majority of these cues without realizing we’re doing it- but we do have to actually be able to experience them if we want to access the rich trove of information and connection they represent.

When we interact anonymously or nearly anonymously- like responding to a post or comment on social media by someone you’ve never met and probably never will- we short-circuit millennia of amazing engineering that helps us make most human interactions useful, peaceful, and positive. We are more easily deceived online, are more likely to use bigoted or hateful speech, and are more likely to unthinkingly disclose information about ourselves, big or small, that can have lifelong consequences when captured, used, and abused.

We are simply not ourselves.

In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power Of Talk in a Digital Age, MIT professor and researcher Shelly Turkle says, “Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.”

I have a challenge for you- a contextual JOMO Quest. For one week, “score” every interpersonal interaction you can catch in a memo pad: each email you answer, each text exchange, staff meeting, buying a bagel, bathing your kid, talking over drinks, calling your mom, whatever.

Score 5 for an interaction in person, face-to-face. Score 3 points for a synchronous (real-time) interaction not in person- a phone call or video conference, for example. Score 1 point for asynchronous, remote interactions (texting, email, and everything else). At the end of the day, rate your day overall from 1-10 in terms of how good you feel. Were the days with high-value interactions better ones for you, on average? I’d be shocked if they weren’t. 

See you again soon - and someday, I hope to really see you.