Hellish

My younger colleagues at the firm, the young associates, are pilots in their cockpits. They assemble their multiple technologies - a laptop, two iPhones, an iPad. And then they put their earphones on. Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits. And then they are isolated. You wouldn't want to disturb the pilot in his cockpit. You wouldn't want to disturb this lawyer in his bubble. It's not how it used to be. . . . It used to be that associates were available to be interrupted . . . but in a good way. You could talk to them. They were there to be worked, very hard, to be engaged and mentored. Now, the feeling is that you are only getting the most you can out of them if you leave them alone in their cockpits.

- A senior partner at a Boston law firm, quoted in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle