Liz Breslin examines the changes in conversational trends.
Here are some disturbing trends for you.
We spend less time cooking but more hours watching chefs create on our screens.
We leave our chores and DIY untouched but watch endless renovation on TV.
And we have less time and inclination to properly converse, though we have more means of communication than ever.
If you're not convinced on the last of this triptych, ask yourself how often you say ''I'll send you the link'' rather than explain a concept or idea.
Luckily for those of us whose conversational skills are waning, there is no shortage of ways to access experts interacting meaningfully and mellifluously.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks and their ''x'' offshoots amaze us on a range of subjects, but mostly in the fact people can remember and sustain an opinion over up to 18 minutes.
In a society where we're taught not to remember information but just to access and process it, even the necessary memory recall is archaically impressive indeed.
We've had our own run of TEDx talks here in Wanaka, and now we are aspiring to listen to people talking together.
We're an aspiring lot here: if you check the phone book, a lot of businesses in the Upper Clutha are Aspiring someone or something.
Do we aspire to be more eloquent, though, inspired by experts on technology and literature?
Will it improve our own level of dinner-table talk?
Or will we just watch them like television and then retreat into tweeting and multi-messaging?
Linguistic philosopher Paul Grice defined the process of proper conversation like this: ''Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.''
It's called the co-operative principle and it's beautiful to watch it in seamless practice.
Notice that ''pick up your phone and interact with it'' has no place in the sequence.
(Although in a recent US survey, 31% of people said they would rather text than talk to someone.)
Of course, conversation has changed markedly thanks to the rise of so-called social media.
It may be social but is it sociable?
Our conversational trends show that we are going the opposite way to the Turing test.
This test was set up in the 1950s by Alan Turing to determine whether a machine could demonstrate intelligent behaviour similar to that of humans.
Fast-forward 65 years and we might more pertinently test some humans to see how computational we have become.
Having a traditional conversation is now so unusual that in meetings it gets marked as an action point or an outcome in its own right.
''Let's have a conversation about that'' has become common business parlance.
When what?
You're talking already. Or soundbiting. Or creating valuable content. Or all the other things conversation has become.
Sometimes it's great to go back to basics.
To sit in a room and listen, following the thread of what people are properly, intelligently saying.
The rise of festivals of ideas around the world shows a real cultural desire to delve deeper into issues, to have a more in-depth understanding than a 30-second soundbite or 140 characters can ever give us.
But you don't have to go to the US to check out the New Yorker festival, or to the UK where The Guardian is building an Ideas Centre specifically to engender important discussion.
We have plenty of homegrown ideas and opinions here for those with time to talk and, most crucially, listen.
You can check it out at the weekend if you're in Wanaka or Queenstown and aspiring to have a great conversation.
Or start one yourself, any time, with anyone.
Aspiring Conversations is a new Festival of Ideas run by the Southern Lakes Festival of Colour.
Inaugural sessions will be held in Wanaka and Queenstown from October 10-12.
• Liz Breslin is a Lake Hawea writer.
