The Art of Conversation

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Google has killed the art of conversation.  I think twice about asking friends and colleagues questions because I might get the following answer.

“Just Google it.”
Ah!  Ah!  What happened to conversation, chat or small talk?  It is all about human interaction, live humans that eat, drink, and visit the loo.  It is also about the mouth doing its job.
 
Google does not speak.  It doesn’t have facial expressions that warn me that the conversation is turning sour, or smiles that warm my heart.  It is not even heated like some languages that have fire under the belly, but the speakers are not fighting at all.

Conversation is a transport network of highways, feeder roads, traffic lights that shuffle between green, amber and red, stop signs and the cul de sac.

Just Google it, is a cul de sac.  It is a dead end, a message that I should get lost, get a life or leave the room.  Asking for directions is going to suffer then, because much as we use GPS and Google maps, we still get lost.
I was waiting for the lights to change at the corner of Portage and Smith this past week, when this woman asked me where the Radisson Hotel was.

“It’s right there,” I pointed at it, proud to be a local.  Google take a hike.
By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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