Staggering numbers of people read this story over the weekend - over 150,000 hits in one day for a little piece about the dying art of conversation. It was on the front page in early editions but migrated back a few column inches to make room for a horde of fox-baiting red coats (of which more later).
The conversation story was spun out of a survey purporting to show that around two thirds of Britons prefer the exchange of mindless tittle tattle to weighty Sophoclean dialogue. Too much banal chat, not enough 'art of conversation'.
The story got picked up by bloggers at home and abroad, most of whom seem to agree that we are a nation of inarticulate thickos whose minds have been rotted by technology. Apparently, it is an ironclad fact, forged in the crucible of pub speculation, that the attention span of the nation diminishes in direct proportion to the increased processing capacity of the microchip. Buy an iPod, lose 10 IQ points.
But we here on the Observer blog remain sceptical. We hypothesis that conversation is much as it always was: sometimes witty and engaging, oftentimes not. Still, we are pleased to have provided such a rich subject for, er ... conversation. (Our favourite post on the subject so far comes from Buddhist blog PaperFrog.)
What we need now is to drive some traffic through our post reporting on blogs reporting on the Observer reporting how no-one has serious conversations anymore until we have a chattering feedback loop.
Meanwhile, on page 21, there's a war going on.
