The Death of Small Talk
A meandering brain dump on conversation, neural laces, and the singularity.
“So the Cavaliers just beat the Warriors by 30 points.” My dad shared this with me as we were sitting in my folks’ kitchen last night. He had just seen it on TV. It was a cue, a conversation starter. The thing is, this was already old news to me. I was seeing live updates and perpetual reaction online. I knew the game was over before it had even ended, with all the conversation and minutiae on full display. I gave a small smile and simply said, “I know, pretty crazy.”
Which made me think. We often forget that to him — and to everyone, including myself, before the time of the modern web — this was how so many conversations began, and how so much information made it through the grapevine and became common knowledge. Today, when I hear such statements, the knee-jerk thought is a nearly frustrated “This is old news.” As if it’s always been like this.
It’s becoming a faint memory that this is a new world.
This “new world” is omnipresent. In a way, it is all-knowing. Which begs the question: what of the small moments, of the communal updates?
Has the internet brought about the end of small talk? Of pleasant surprise? Of discovering things together and sharing in the collective spark?
I remember being in Buenos Aires during a backpacking adventure with my friends. One of them was desperately trying to remember the name of a band, and none of us had roaming on our phones. Like a transplanted social relic, we collectively wracked our brains, laughing with frustration, helping each other with vague memories. Today? We would have the answer before even asking the question.
Which brings me to my current fascination. Yesterday, we discovered news in a staggered, sporadic way. Even though it moved faster, by TV and radio, it was still largely by chance, or at least dictated to us by schedules beyond our control — the evening news, a certain radio hour, etc. We discovered things together, and shared in the genuine first reaction.
// An aside: we shouldn’t underestimate the amplification of a shared first reaction. I believe it is exponential. Why do you think a live sporting event is so poignant? There is no shortcut.
Today, the news is not dictated. It is by demand. Our demand. As soon as we are curious, we have the answer with a few keystrokes into the oracle that is the internet. With Twitter and the democratization of “live updates” that followed, the answers are not only old facts, but extend into the present moment of live news.
So what about tomorrow? Perhaps there will be no demand. There will be no keystrokes. It will be invisible. We will just know, just as the internet knows. There will be no questions. Which is what the singularity suggests — and what folks like Elon Musk have been suggesting with the idea of a neural lace.
All the answers will be silent, immediate pairings with inquiring thoughts. It will be the death of the spoken question, and thus, surely, the death of small talk. But let’s back up a second. How do we get there?
Elon Musk spawned many a conversation with his recent remarks about neural laces. A neural lace, ICYMI, is:
The big deal is that neural laces were proven to be viable in 2015. Even though everyone, including Elon Musk, is suggesting that this is a direct step to us plugging our brains into computers, that’s a pretty sizeable leap. The real, initial cause for excitement is that this allows us to perhaps get there — to the legitimate computer-brain interface. No technology until now allowed us to monitor neurons, particularly many of them at once. Neural laces do, opening up a whole new world to understanding the brain. That’s when we can perhaps approach the real conscious singularity (and, as Musk seems most concerned with, keep pace with the imminent “artificial super-intelligence”, also know as ASI.)
// Aside. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” I see a parallel as time passes and we near singularity: plugged in minds will discuss ideas, offline minds will discuss events. When the small facts that are the “happenings” of life — events or people — are pervasive, shared knowledge, their shelf life is fleeting. A trending moment is over before it began. The staying power remains not with small updates, but with the big ideas we need to dig into to truly understand. Those things that do not just happen, but need to be constructed. A stream cannot answer these questions for us. (Yet?)
What to make of all this? I think it is cause for great debate. What will a world like this be like, where all the answers exist within our minds? In many ways, would this not also be the death knell of conversation itself? Even if the conversation is purely internal — i.e. mind-to-mind, like an artificial telepathy brought about by our plugged in minds — why have it in the first place? Or will this simply mean that conversations will become exclusively the realm of ideas and philosophy? That could be fluid and beautiful. Something out of Hesse’s Glass Bead Game.
Or perhaps if we are plugged into artificial super intelligence, the value of this would become questionable: why have philosophical debate when we already know all the possibilities in an instant? Perhaps the debate happens, but it only takes milliseconds.
Which begs the question: is this a world we want to live in? Perhaps our children’s children will see these doubts with the same eye-rolling bemusement that we bestow on anyone today who advocates taking society offline. We already know the internet and the digital medium is adversely effecting the social aspects of humanity — but the benefits are addictive and profound.
Perhaps the bigger question is: does it matter? If we have the answers, and ASI has infallible predictions, the only thing we lose is the human connection. On the flip side, perhaps it’s not lost at all, but only amplified. It’s just as easy to argue the case that when we’re all plugged in, and sharing thoughts instantly and with the aide of seeing infinite possibility through ASI, we will transcend conversation with a beautiful new form of connection, of true unity. Maybe empathy will take on new meaning. Maybe bonds will be stronger. Anything seems possible when the complexity of the human mind, the structure of society, and the limitless nature of ASI are blended together.
In the meantime, I’m just going to take a step back and appreciate the small talk while it’s still around.
Mario Vasilescu is the CEO/Co-founder of Readocracy.com. Follow him for more meandering thoughts on startups, technology, society, and the future.
