Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle

This past friday night I attended a lecture given by Sherry Turkle at the Princeton/Columbia Club.Sherry Turkle is the Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self and the author of (mostly recently) of Alone Together--why we expect more from technology and less from each other.Her perspective is that something has gone amiss in our culture, we no longer focus on one another, but look to technology to create our sense of intimacy.Her talk focuses on three mains ideas; technology is re-defining our sense of intimacy, today's adolescents are growing up in a tethered world, and our democratic notion of privacy is ending.


Her talk focused on the impact that technology is having on our lives.We are living with technology in a distracted world. We text everywhere, even at funerals. Our presence, and lack of presence with one another is redefining our relationships. We are deeply attached to our gadgets. Technology has become the architect of our intimacy, and is a substitute for intimacy. We must carefully measure the costs of technology. One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Turkle from the evening was: "Just because we grew up with the internet does not make the internet grown up". We must learn to be present to one another.


She also discussed the damage that technology is causing for adolescents.By being tethered to their technologies, they are always "on", and suffering from performance fatigue.This is enabling an emotional style of "I share, therefore I am." She warns parents that if we do not teach our children how to be alone, they will only be lonely. For adolescents, they are growing up in a culture of distraction, and need to understand what it means to have "sacred spaces". This is a concept that Dr. Turkle defines as a private space, to be able ago have a conversation with yourself. In psychoanalytic terms, this is how the self begins to define itself. Having a conversation with oneself is modeled after conversations that we have with others.This is a generation that is growing up texting, typing and cannot have a conversation. They would rather text than speak on the phone. Technology is redrawing the boundaries of solitude.Dr. Turkle believes that we are abandoning ourselves to our technologies.

She closed her talk again warning us of the long "electronic shadow"that the internet casts. It is defining our notion of privacy and democracy.She discussed the implications of Larry Page's (CEO of Google) comment that privacy is not a relevant social norm. Dr. Turkle countered with the idea that intimacy is only possible with privacy.Her closing words were: "We make our technologies and they in turn shape us."