- Use what we learn in virtual world to live better lives in the real world
- We’re letting technology take us to places that we don’t want to go
- Studied mobile technologies for over 20 years
- Mobile technology doesn’t only change what we do, but who we are
- Texting, emailing at breakfast, whilst their children complain
- Texting at funerals
- Escaping from grief through technology
- Trouble in how we relate to each other, but also how we relate to ourselves
- Capacity for self-reflection
- People want to be together, but elsewhere
- Customise their lives
- Can end up hiding from each other, even though we seem to be connected more than ever
- The goldilocks effect. Not too close, not too far, just right. Technology keeps people at a distance.
- “Someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation”
- Edit, delete, portray the ‘self’ that we want to be.
- Self-reflection is the bed-rock of development for children/young people
- No one is listening.
- People experience pretend empathy as if it were the real thing.
- We expect more from technology and less from each other.
- Technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable.
- We’re lonely, but afraid of intimacy.
- Designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
- ‘We will never have to be alone’
- Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved.
- Changing the way we think of ourselves, a new way of being.
- “I share, therefore I am”
- “I have a feeling, I want to make a call”
- “I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text”
- If we don’t have connection, we don’t feel like ourselves.
- End up isolated if you don’t cultivate the capacity for solitude.
- Solitude is where you find yourself, so you can reach out to people and form attachments.
- Using other people and things as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.
- If we don’t teach our children to be alone, all they’ll know is being lonely.
- It’s time to talk.
- Plenty of time for us to consider how we use it, how we build it.
- Develop a more self-aware relationship with our technology.
- Create sacred spaces at home and reclaim them for conversation.
Joe Million 