Is The Conversation Dying?

With cell phones, I-phones, blackberries and computers, Americans today have no trouble making connections. It's making conversation that seems to be a problem.

To screenwriter Delia Ephron, life has always been about conversation and it starts with listening.

"If you are blogging, you're emailing, you aren't listening, right?" she told CBS News correspondent Erin Moriarty. "You don't have to listen. It's really, just what's in your own head."

In "You've Got Mail", a movie Ephron co-wrote with her sister Nora, romance sparks the banter between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, both in person and on email.

"I mean conversation is about feelings and emotion," Ephron said. "That's what it should really be about. If we're not seeing it, that's the loss."

James Lipton makes conversation for a living talking to famous actors on the television program "Inside the Actors studio."

"In a good conversation, what's happening is that two people are engaging," he said. "One is hearing the other. That sparks something. He or she replies. Then the other person who is listening just as well, responds. And then you've got a genuine conversation."

Lipton has concerns that technology is killing the good conversation and proper English.

"Do you read your Internet mail?" he said. "It's all abbreviations and the quickest possible way of transmitting the thought from the brain to the computer. Well, that's great for transmitting messages. But that's not a conversation. It just isn't."

For more on the American conversation, tune into Sunday Morning at 9 a.m. ET.