Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

Many interesting points, and a lot of angles covered, the only real flaw with this book is the abundance of separate directions that it takes the reader in, with similar conclusions. There is a tonne of good information here, and this is a perfect grounding book for how real and simulated (through digital media) life interact with one another. Also, loads of interesting case studies and stories.

I picked up this book from the free pile on our office clean up day, and it's not too hard to see why it was discarded. Published in 1996, it is painfully dated, but at the same time still useful in examining how the Internet has changed people's behaviours. She could probably write a revised version that substitutes MUDs for MMPORGs, but the effect would still be the same - when people go online they reveal or create identities for themselves and how they use them either to simply "be" or safely explore parts of their identity or gender swapping. It's hard to recall how a relatively short time span has passed since the Internet became popular 10-12 years and just how much the technology has changed. Before I used to have to stay up to show more go online so as not to hog the phone line, now the Internet is "always on" in our house. Something so new has become so commonplace that one doesn't really think about how it got to this point, and Sherry Turkle's book is that explanation. show less

An interesting study on the first effects of personal computers and Internet on the way we think our personal and our collective identities.
Turkle first introduces the notions of simulation, taking the computer one step further from the 'big calculator' and toward a more 'friendly machine' and 'helpful machine' popular view. She spends a lot of time discussing artificial intelligence and its possibilities, which is the weak point of the book, in my opinion. Many of the interventions she collects for this part of the book seem to bring nothing to the point she is trying to expose.

The last part of the study is definitively the most interesting, focusing on how Internet changed our lives and discussing the experience value that a 'multiple show more life on the web' can or can not really have.

This book was published in 1995 ; of course the author had no way of knowing how much the Internet would change again and what kind of new possibilities it would offer. I think that it what makes the interest of this book : you can really have a clear idea of the expectations people had of future technologies and compare with what actually happened. show less

I read this back in 2002 after reading an article by Turkle in a mass comm class. I should really come back to it and see how things have changed in ten years, and how Turkle's arguments have played out.

Aleks Krotoski, broadcaster, journalist, and academic specialising in technology and interactivity, has chosen to discuss Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet on FiveBooks as one of the top five on her subject - Virtual Living, saying that:



"... Turkle is a brilliant observer of the online world, and what makes the Net incredibly interesting is that it was never intended to be a social medium. They created this kind of pipeline for trading hard data between scientists and sharing computer resources in the military and for some reason we insane people decide to start pouring other things down that pipeline, like, for example, our social lives...."



The full interview is available here: show more target="_top">http://five-books.com/interviews/aleks-krotoski

Writer Lev Grossman has chosen to discuss Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject- The World Wide Web, saying that:


"...What is emerging, Turkle argues, is a new sense of identity, one which is de-centred and multiple. She describes the trends in computer design, in artificial intelligence, and in people's experience of virtual environments..."


The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/lev-grossman show less

internet personas at the dawn of the cyber age.

My review of this book: http://waywind.livejournal.com/774270.html