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A teacher told me the other day that discipline has improved immeasurably since mobile phones were banned from her school.
Students paid attention in class. They were even spotted talking to each other outside the class. They had "conversations".
This is obviously a very good thing.
We might learn facts from the internet but, I think, we are more likely to get ideas from conversation and argument. A spoken conversation can go in all sorts of unpredictable directions. Using the internet is a more passive experience. In face-to-face conversation, ideas develop. Minds are changed more easily.
Internet interaction (as we are having now) is all very well but it misses the subtlety imparted by tiny facial expressions - that little lip curl or the raised eye-brow of scepticism.
And written English finds it very hard to convey tone. How can you tell if someone is being sarcastic or genuine in written English (the great journalist Keith Waterhouse used to suggest that there should a font called ironic to signal when the writer was being ironic).
So chatter is the thing - face-to-face conversation.
There is even an argument that the 17th and 18th century emergence of coffee houses in Britain and Germany helped create our modern world of rationality and science.
"News about many issues, of a religious, literary, philosophical, but particularly of a political nature, circulated feverishly in coffee houses. People went to coffee houses as they had once gone to the ancient forum, to talk and listen, to inform themselves and to debate ideas," Oxford Reference says.
And from debate came progress. Those chattering coffee drinkers generated ideas and inquisitiveness.
So runs the argument - though I suspect I'm losing my campaign to get people to ration their online lives: in the world of the emoji, face-to-face conversation takes a back seat.
Worryingly, Australians seem to use emojis more than people elsewhere. We are wedded to them (heart emoji needed!)
"Most Australian users (87 per cent) are likely to feel more understanding or more empathetic towards someone if they use an emoji," as the global software company Adobe concluded in 2022. (You don't need to be cynical to think that a global software company has some interest in promoting the inanity of emojis - the plural of which, by the way, it seems to think is emoji).
"While two-thirds (64 per cent) of Australians use emoji to make conversations more fun, they are also used as a powerful emotional tool. Nearly all Australians (92 per cent) use emoji to lighten the mood and show support for the people/person they are communicating with."
And this sentence ought to ring alarm bells across the sentient world: "More than half (65 per cent) of Australians lean on emoji use when they have difficulties expressing their emotions in words. Love (73 per cent) and happiness (71 per cent) are the top emotions Australian emoji users express using emotions."
And just think of this: "Most Australian users (87 per cent) are likely to feel more understanding or more empathetic towards someone if they use an emoji."
Of course, there is value to communicating online - we're doing it now - but we shouldn't lose the habit of face-to-face communication: talking and conversation.
There is a phrase I like: "alone together". It was coined to describe a world where people are alone but have the illusion of being in a community because they talk to others remotely.
We should resist being alone together. We should be together together.
Hurrah for the schools that have banned phones.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Having said all of that, please engage in online conversation by emailing your thoughts to echidna@theechidna.com.au (emojis optional). Do you use emoji? Are they appropriate in some situations? If so, when? Which emoji in particular do you love and hate?
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The CFMEU's Victorian branch has been placed into administration after allegations of criminal behaviour and links with bikie gangs within the union. The union's national office will assume senior executive powers and set up an independent process to probe into the allegations of criminal behaviour.
- King Charles III and Queen Camilla are set to visit Australia and Samoa in October, Buckingham Palace says. The royal couple will visit Canberra and New South Wales.
- Australia is facing an unprecedented threat from three different strains of bird flu with a fourth on the nation's doorstep, experts warn. The CSIRO said genetic sequencing has revealed three different strains of H7 - a highly pathogenic avian influenza - have hit farms at roughly the same time.
THEY SAID IT: "A consultation process is what some authority sets in motion preparatory to doing what it intended all along."
"Trying to keep up with current slang sucks."
"Ninety-five per cent of all statistics, including this one, are bogus."
YOU SAID IT: I wrote about royal visits, and there were some strong views.
Sue remembers when Queen Elizabeth II came to Australia in 1954 and said she hasn't been a fan of royals since. "I was in the youngest group from school to walk, in crocodile lines with blazers, hats and gloves, to what had been renamed Queen Elizabeth Park in Concord, Sydney. Being small, at the front of the crowd, I managed to watch the shadow of the car passing from my position of being pushed across the chain metal barrier. Back at school I was in trouble because I was hurting and wasn't impressed." Her son was there when the Queen came to Canberra in the 1980s. He was about six and "in trouble with his teacher for his 'misbehaviour' when the Queen was visiting one of the memorials on Anzac Parade" when he called out to Bob Hawke.
Terry is another who remembers the 1954 visit. "As a 14-year-old kid at school in Essendon in Melbourne we were all made to go the 100 yards to the main road to the city to wave to the Queen. We all got a wave but my memory is that it was bloody hot standing for ages in the sun."
John was short and to the point. "No to Charles III and the monarchy! Yes to an Australian republic (as soon as possible)!!!"
Bruce was even more succinct. "No."
Stuart is worried about what a republic would mean. "What makes support for a republic less likely is the example set in the US. Money buys power and the teals here in Australia are an unfortunate example. God forbid that it would extend to our leadership."
Susan was also worried about the impact of having to vote for a head of state. It "makes me apprehensive particularly in the light of what has happened in America".
Maggie says she's in a third group, and wants a republic, but not straight away. "An elected president, with an election campaign, would inevitably be political, and I favour an apolitical figure. Let's have one chosen by a 2/3 majority of a joint sitting of parliament." She also makes the point that perhaps Australians shouldn't refer to King Charles III. "Charles should be Charles I of Australia, since we missed out on having Charles I and Charles II back in the 1600s. Elizabeth snuck in as Elizabeth II because the title Queen of Australia wasn't created until after she was queen, by which time it was a bit late to change."
A few of you pointed out that general television began broadcasting later in Australia, in 1956. The Queen's visit was broadcast to just one site.