Conversation — is there an app for that?

Smartphone usage is changing our face-to-face conversations–[even when the phones are hidden](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html):

> [Her impatience] is characteristic of what the psychologists Howard Gardner and Katie Davis called the “app generation,” which grew up with phones in hand and apps at the ready. It tends toward impatience, expecting the world to respond like an app, quickly and efficiently. The app way of thinking starts with the idea that actions in the world will work like algorithms: Certain actions will lead to predictable results.

I’ve always thought that it was the act of _programming_ computers that made tech geeks (like myself) talk like robots. Turns out the cause may simply be _using_ them.