Sherry Turkle

I found 'Alone Together' hugely thought-provoking. The methods used are anthropological and grounded in the ideas of psychoanalysis, which made for an interesting change. The specific points within each theme are introduced and explained through case studies. Such an approach differs from the kind of social science I am used to, which I found powerful as Turkle’s methods displayed no cross-contamination from economics. Most quantitative and some qualitative work regurgitates the show more assumptions of economics in a manner I find hugely frustrating. On the other hand, it is difficult to generalise from a small sample, or indeed generalise very far at all when you’re dealing with matters of psychology. Nonetheless, it is important to study how rapid changes in technology impact upon people. Turkle’s book is fascinating as a starting point. As I read it I could not help but evaluate the roles of the internet and mobile phones in my life and contemplate how I could establish different boundaries with them.

The book begins with children and their interaction with robotic toys. I am of the generation that first experienced such things; I had an off-brand tamagotchi as a tweenager but never wanted a furby. Those weird chattery things have always freaked me out. Turkle expounds on how very young children interact with these toys, at an age when they are still finding out how to categorise objects. To me it seems odd to contemplate that children try to understand whether a furby is alive like an animal, whether it has feelings, whether it can die. That was strange, but the section about elderly people interacting with robotic baby dolls and Paro the robot seal was heart-breaking. In particular, the insight that the elderly people studied got much more from interactions with the researchers than the robots. The robots were better company than no-one, but not a substitute for real people. Turkle also confronts the social assumption that robots are needed to look after the elderly because young people cannot, for some reason.

The latter part of the book covers changes of communication patterns amongst (presumably American) teenagers and working age people. I found this eye-opening; how can anyone send hundreds of texts a day?! It takes a fairly negative approach to the always-connected ethic of smartphones, which I certainly agree with. I don’t have a smartphone because I don’t like them. It seems a little baffling to me that so many people keep them despite finding the attendant anxiety and obsessive behaviour upsetting. Then again, smartphones didn’t exist when I was teenager, although mobile phones did. Growing up with the assumption of constant connection by social networking and texting must be intensely stressful. Despite it being based in specific cases, I found Turkle’s argument for the negative side effects of recently-adopted technologies convincing. It certainly made a pleasant change from the constant barrage of phone advertising. Why should it be strange to not want a smartphone? Constant connection to the internet is neither necessary nor desirable for every single person.

That said, I wonder to what extent I was convinced by the book because it espoused views that I already held. I am somewhat wary of psychoanalytical theory, as my efforts to gain a basic understanding of it have left me dubious. I would have also liked the book to contain more evidence on the actual uptake of technologies and how it breaks down demographically, even if only for America. How does internet/smartphone use vary along gender, wealth, and age lines? A few numbers here and there would have been nice. Moreover, the massive American bias of the whole thing is not actually mentioned. Although similar trends can be observed in other rich developed nations, most likely, the cultural and demographic contexts will definitely differ. Which will change the impacts of technology, in no doubt very interesting ways.

The book also raises, without delving into, the huge and difficult question of capitalism and authenticity. In the twenty-first century of multinational company-controlled neoliberal capitalism, what is authentic experience? Are texts and emails less authentic forms of communication than letters and face-to-face conversations? If going out to a concert, film, or meal is punctuated by texting, tweeting, and posting photos online, do these attempts to capture the authenticity of the moment diminish it? I was at the cinema a few days ago and noticed at the edge of my vision a blue glow - someone was checking their phone in the middle of an exciting action film. Just the awareness that someone was doing that distracted me from the film. When considering these massive, abstract questions about everyday material experience, it is always tempting to resort to anecdote, so I can sympathise with Turkle.

That said, it is not the case that people are freely adopting fancy new phones, tablets, etc in a neutral environment. These are extremely profitable products, pushed relentlessly upon us by massive companies using sophisticated marketing techniques. As well as the unintended effects, it is worth considering the history behind this rapid technological upheaval and this is definitely something I’d like to read more about. As for authenticity, I once read a book that tried to define it ([b:Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin And The Lust For Real Life|1667416|Authenticity Brands, Fakes, Spin And The Lust For Real Life|David Boyle|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1186591176s/1667416.jpg|1662303]), without making much headway. It is one of those things that can scarcely be put into words, yet you know it when you feel it. The main difficulty is that everyone surely experiences it differently. Then, when different people label an experience authentic or otherwise, the disagreement often takes an exclusionary tone of snobbery or trendiness. It is also a snake that eats its own tail, as authenticity seems only available at incredibly high cost or for no money at all. What was once seen as new, original, and innovative is rapidly co-opted for profit and becomes mainstream, thus somehow its authenticity is degraded. Authenticity has itself become a commodity, likely by changing what the words means to people. Which is practically impossible to pin down, making this tangent rather futile. (Although it did remind me to think further about whether irony and authenticity are mutually exclusive.)

On a more pragmatic note, Turkle concludes with a set of personal anecdotes from which I inferred the need to find your comfort level with technology and re-negotiate a compact with it. She could perhaps have made this clearer, although doing so would not necessarily fit with the ethos of the book. Anthropological case study-based methods do not lend themselves to generalisable policy proscriptions. During and after reading this book, though, I contemplated how I use my laptop, my phone, and social media and decided to make some tweaks. I was also reminded of the very frustrating inconsistency of my concentration levels. When reading a book, I can easily concentrate without interruption for three or four hours, basically until I get too hungry. I can’t work for anywhere near that long on an internet-connected computer without being distracted. My PhD work is all being done on a laptop, which is a total procrastination machine. If I can read a book for so long, why is my concentration so pathetically poor with the internet just a click away? I would love to disconnect the wireless but cannot when so many of my research materials are online. It’s maddening. I love the internet, but do not feel adequately in control of my use of it. This worries me. I imagine I’m not the only one. show less

When I was giving birth to my daughter, the OB kept trying to talk me into a Caesarean. He always stood on the side of the bed closest to the door. If I was lying with my back to the door, he spoke to my rear-end. Even when he happened to be facing me he always stood, forcing me to look up at him as he spoke.

Every time he suggested surgery, I confirmed with him that there was no medical need for it, and continued to refuse the surgery. During one of my refusals, the nurse had sat near the show more wall doing paperwork. After the doctor left, she pulled up a chair, sat down, and looked me in the eye.

"I avoided an unnecessary C-section," she said. "If you're going to do this, you're going to have to be strong." I started crying.

"Why are you crying?" she asked.

"Because you're the first person to treat me like I was really here," I said.

Several years ago, I read about a new invention that would monitor contraction duration, strength and frequency; mother's heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure; and baby's heart rate. A nurse could keep track of many patients at once from the nurses' station, reducing the need to go into patients' rooms and helping deal with the nursing shortage.

On the surface, it kind of seems like it makes sense. There are too few nurses to attend to all of the patients, so let's fill the void with technology. The assumption is that the choice is between what's essentially robotic care and no care. When seen this way, it makes sense to go with technology. This, however, diminishes the role of the nurse to that of a machine, and it reduces the birthing woman to an object to be monitored, a problem to be addressed. This solution ignores the human role in caring for other humans as well as the patient's humanity (which often gets lost in the U.S. medical system anyway).

Humans do make mistakes. It was a human doctor who was pushing for a surgery that was not medically indicated. Had I been monitored by machines, maybe the issue of a surgical birth wouldn't even have come up. But it's not the doctor that these inventions would take out of the equation. If that nurse hadn't been in my room to care for me, if she had been monitoring me remotely via machines to which I was attached, would I have ended up with unnecessary surgery? Maybe. But even if I'd ended up with a surgical birth (which I didn't, incidentally), the personal care that nurse gave me could not have been replaced by a machine. She was the only person at that hospital up to that point who made me feel like I was seen as a human being rather than just a meat sack with a baby inside. Even almost thirteen years later, I still start crying at the memory of her sitting next to me, speaking quietly but firmly while looking me in the eye, showing me that she was there for me, not just as a medical professional, but as a fellow human being.

This is the crux of the argument Turkle makes in this book. Technology provides us with some phenomenal, life-enhancing tools, but it's easy to get caught up in the novelty and lose sight of what we're replacing. We are primates. We need social interaction; we need human touch and connection to thrive. It might be expedient to relegate some of the less emotionally or physically pleasant tasks to machines, but what are we giving up in the process?

It's like when parents are cautioned against too much screen time for their children. Research suggests it's not the addition of the screen time that's damaging, but the absence of what that screen time replaces. An electronic babysitter is helpful for a parent who is overwhelmed by the emotionally and physically draining constant need to attend to a young child's needs, but we neglect to ask why we need it in the first place. Why is it that parents are so overwhelmed that they aren't able to offer their children their attention and emotional presence? This question isn't an indictment of parents by any stretch. I have been there---I'm still there---and I know that the problem doesn't originate with one parent or one family, but with our society's expectations for us at a time when in-person community is often difficult to find. Not only are the children lacking connection, but their parents are, too, and both are trying to meet that need through machines. But why do we turn to a machine rather than addressing the actual problem? As some of the children in Turkle's book ask when faced with the idea of robot pets to provide companionship to grandparents in nursing homes: "Don't we have people for these jobs?"

That's one aspect of Turkle's argument. Another is how Internet interactions might be changing our interactions "in the real." When we're online, we don't interact with a whole person, and we don't interact as our whole selves. Either by developing an avatar or by curating photos, likes, dislikes, on social media, or by pre-editing our responses on texts and instant messaging, we project the image we want to project as we interact with others who are also projecting the image they want to project. We can't know for sure who's on the other end of our communications. We can't know for sure what is accurate, what is real, and what is a show. We risk losing the patience and practice for dealing with complete human beings. Even if we crave in-person interaction---and can find others who are also willing to set aside their devices---will we have the skills to engage with people in real life when we've been socialized online? While this is likely more of an issue for net natives than for those of us who spent our childhoods and teen years without the constant connection of Internet and cell phones, I also see it in myself and other people of my generation and older as we choose to avoid the potential discomfort of interacting with people we can't turn off or ignore in a socially acceptable way if things get too intense.

While I really enjoyed the major points of Turkle's book, there are also a couple of things I see as flaws. First, except for her studies with children's reactions to My Real Baby, she appears to rely primarily on people from middle- to upper middle-class backgrounds for her research, and as far as I can tell, exclusively on people along the East Coast of the United States. I wonder if she would have seen different reactions had she taken her studies to the Midwest, South, or West.

Second, the book was somewhat repetitive. She has some really great points, but they risk getting lost because she says them so many times, I am tempted to skim because I'm bored. But maybe this is just a result of my being programmed for online reading.

In the end, Turkle isn't arguing that we turn away from technology, but rather that we use it with our eyes wide open to both the benefits and the potential risks. show less

Though I agree with Turkle's basic thesis, the tone is repetitive, tedious, and, at points, ham-fisted. This book probably could have been greatly condensed, and I think that the first half of the book, the bit concerning robots, could very nearly be a separate work entirely. As I said, I think her ideas are important, and I think we should explore the potential damage that we are doing through our commitment to constant connectivity, but I also think that this could have been a more show more enjoyable (and concise) book. show less

Although I'm generally in Turkle's camp—I had a pre-computer childhood, and I'm thankful for it—there's an unrelenting alarmist tone to "Reclaiming Conversation" that does her argument no service. This is a book made up of anecdotes, all about something that we have lost, or are in danger of losing, with only the rare rhetorical nod to the benefits that the mixed blessing of digital connection brings. A book titled "Reclaiming Conversation" should spend at least half its pages discussing show more the positive steps that the title hints at.

To be sure, the withering of real human connection that often accompanies our universal digital addiction is alarming. (I was especially aghast to consider how babies and toddlers whose parents' faces are turned too often to their phones instead of to their children may grow up with developmental and personality disorders due to insufficient "face time.") But sometimes Turkle doesn't give due consideration to the opposing side. That "woman in her thirties" on page 29 who talks about the advantages of arguing with her partner online has a point, I think: "We get our ideas out in a cooler way. We can fight without saying things we'll regret." I wouldn't be so quick to assume this is another example of "the move from conversation to mere connection." show less