Donald Clegg: Art of talking appears lost in whiz-bang world

(Note to readers: This is a two-part column, unless a bus hits me before next month.)

Stupid question alert: “Why, self,” I asked myself, “don’t people actually talk to each other anymore?”

You probably notice the same thing, if you’re a regular moviegoer, that my wife and I do: Looking at the rows of people below, couples and families are chatting, passing the popcorn around, and are generally engaged with one another, right?

Oh. That would be not. All you see are these little lit-up screens, with fingers dancing across them, twittering or tweeting or texting or whatever it is that people do with their “phones.” (It seems to me that they’re used for everything but talking. Except when driving.)

I’ve never done any of those things and I have to admit that I don’t even know which is which. Is Twitter a site where people tweet? Or vice-versa? Why do people text instead of talk? Weren’t they born with vocal cords?

I just read that about 163 million Americans visited Facebook in August, spending nearly eight hours on the site, a sizable chunk of the 35 hours per month American Internet users average online. And yes, I do spend a fair amount of time myself, mostly reading, rarely You Tubing. (Hmmm, I’m not sure I even spelled that right. Is it one word or two?) All I know is that I’ve spent zero hours, zero minutes and zero seconds “Facebooking,” or whatever you call it. I guess I’m just not social.

Oh. I just did a little research (if you want to call typing a few words into the Google God “research”) and I see that it’s YouTube and that it sucks up 2.9 billion hours of total life worldwide per month. Geez, that’s 326,294 years. I think I’ve probably spent maybe four hours or so, total, mostly seeing how to change the tires or adjust the brakes and whatnot on my Trikke.

Oh. I guessed right! You do tweet on Twitter. I still don’t know exactly what a “tweet” is – is it the same as a “text”? – but there are about 200 million of them happening per day worldwide. Whatever they’re for, and whatever you do to make one, that’s a lot.

But, true confession time – and I realize it’s a bit of a non sequitur – I do know what Angry Birds is because my wife has an iPhone, and I pretty much have to avoid playing it at all or it’ll suck me in for at least an hour. Best for me just not to touch that evil gadget. Steve Jobs may have been Satan, and he’s gonna be back again, with something even more wicked.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Why,” you ask, “should I care about any of this, and what’s it to you, anyway, how I spend my time?” That’s a fine question, to which I have a simple answer: “Whatever else you’re doing,” says I, “you’re not reading.”

And if you are reading, you’re reading the Bible and religion more than anything. If you’re a woman, you read more than a man, but men read more nonfiction than women do. If you’re a conservative, you read less than a liberal. And even if you are a reader, you don’t read much, as only half of the nation’s book readers claim to read more than four a year. A quarter of adults read no, zero, nada, books at all.

Why does this even matter? Trust me, it does.

If you’ll be my “friend,” I’ll text or tweet you why on Facebook next month.