Alone Together



Sherry Turkle discusses issues of technology and how it impacts human interaction. In the first half of the book it mostly deals with issues of robots and how their presence is impacting children, but she also deals with issues of robots taking care of the elderly and also keeping them company. Several questions are raised about how attached children become with Furbys and robotic pets like AIBO. Interesting quesitons are raised about just how much interaction is acceptable with robots, could they be caretakers for children and the elderly, would we want to be taken care of by a robot? It also deals with how people are open to the idea of being in a relationship with a robot due to the avoidance of rejection and other human emotions. It leaves you wondering just how much robot interaction there should be in the future and do the positives impacts outweight the negative impacts on society as a whole.

In the second half of the book, it is focused more on the Internet and how it changes our way of living. Turkle discusses just how chained to technology we are. "Connectivity becomes a craving...We learn to require it, even as it depletes us (Turkle, 227). We close out people who are physically close to us because we can't focus on our email or our text message that we are trying to send. Turkle is very uncomfortable abou

t how attached people are to technology and how people prefer it over face to face interaction. There are various Internet sites mentioned like Second Life, online confession sites, I found one called Truu Confessions,these sites are used as an escape from the real world and ask interesting questions about the boundaries of online sites and real life. Is it okay to marry someone on Second Life and does confessing something on a website get rid of the need to apologize? Towards the end Turkle reminds us that it is not too late to take a step back from technology "it is time to look again toward the virtues of solitude, deliberateness, and living fully in the moment (Turkle, 296).

thumb|left|300px|The Facebook song!

Turkle is uncomfortable with the huge role that technology is playing in our lives, and like the subtitle on her book, she believes that we have higher expectations for technology than we do for each other. Some agree with Turkle and others strongly disagree, but everyone at least ends this book with some food for thought about the role of technology and the impact it is having on society.

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