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№ 2013.008 — Middlebury College — Commencement address
Jonathan Safran Foer
Field: letters
Foer recounts seeing a teenage girl crying on her phone in public and his hesitation over whether to intervene, using the moment to explore how communication technologies make it easier to retreat from genuine human connection. He argues that we have come to prefer diminished substitutes for face-to-face interaction, and that this habit gradually erodes our capacity for attention and empathy. He concludes that attending to the needs of others, though difficult, is the essential work of a finite life.
Key moments
- 01 Witnessing a crying stranger and weighing whether to intervene
- 02 Argument that technology celebrates connectedness but encourages retreat
- 03 Communication tools as diminished substitutes we come to prefer
- 04 Attentiveness and empathy as the essential work of a mortal life
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording