March 2 (UPI) -- The most fundamental human act, communication, is entering a crisis that is reshaping human relationality. The stakes are not merely cultural. Digital platforms and the wider ecosystem of information and communication technologies are changing how we live, how we form judgments, and how we recognize one another.
The biologist Humberto Maturana offered a useful warning: human beings are "self-producing" (autopoietic) systems, and our habits are learned and replicated through interaction. That insight cuts both ways. If conversation is learned socially, then the conditions that shape conversation can also deform it. In a real sense, we become what our conversations become.
More connections, thinner communication
The quantitative growth of connections has not produced a comparable improvement in communication quality. When daily attention is trained on the superficial, people adopt a fleeting focus that rarely asks why events happen.
What once could stimulate self-knowledge, clearer perception, and openness to otherness is now reconfigured by algorithms that reward quick, binary reactions. Approval and disapproval are reduced to fast signals. Over time, that pattern can create closed circles of sameness and deepen polarization.
