There are far more people today with a decent level of education that have the free time to engage in idle thinking and chatter than there ever were when salons were a thing. There are also far more ways to engage in conversation with people that don't require having those people be within the range of a typical horse-drawn carriage.
It makes me a little sad when there are people posting on an internet forum (the name "forum" should be a clue), wondering at the loss of the salon and where all the thinkers have gone. The salon hasn't gone anywhere, it's now everywhere and accessible by (nearly) everyone.
And naturally, there's the usual subtext from the usual suspects of "things used to be better x number of years ago".
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Originally Posted by teh603
Intelligent conversation is almost completely dead....
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I think you might be generalizing from your own particular circumstances. There are uncountable places to find intelligent conversation, both online and off; maybe try widening your horizons beyond MobileRead?