Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Paperback – October 2, 2012

Immediacy versus immensity. What does it mean to be only a couple of key strokes away from speaking to anyone on the planet? We still struggle to find an adequate metaphor for the impact of technology on daily life today.I am reminded of when I arrived in Germany as a foreign exchange student in 1978, Before I left, I could not find my destination, Göttingen, on any map that I owned or could find in the local library. Furthermore, my correspondence with the university was entirely in German, a language that I had studied but not yet mastered. When my flight arrived in Frankfurt, I was entirely at the mercy of the stationmaster to get on the right train to reach my destination. Today, answers to all such travel questions can be found on any smart phone; one need not be fluent in German to understand them fully; and, anywhere along the way, you can call your parents (or kids) to help sort everything out. Talk about a reduction in uncertainty!The effect of changes in technology on us as individuals and on today’s culture is the subject of Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together. Turkle explores the immediacy of technology in part one—The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies—and the immensity of technology in part two—Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes (vii). While these parts could easily have been themes in separate books, Turkle’s interest in the changing perceptions of intimacy and solitude clearly binds them together. Alone Together is part of a trilogy (The Second Self, Alone Together, and Life on the Screen; 4) focused on the cultural effect of technology.Turkle’s 14 chapters are equally divided between analysis of the individual response to robots—1. Nearest Neighbors2. Alive Enough3. True Companions4. Enchantment5. Complexities6. Love’s Labor Lost7. Communion—and the response to life tethered to cell and computer networks—8. Always On9. Growing Up Tethered10. No Need to Call11. Reduction and Betrayal12. True Confessions13. Anxiety14. The Nostalgia of the Young (vii-viii).Repeatedly, I found Turkle anticipating my anxieties about technology and offering a balanced assessment. She writes:“we are so enmeshed in our connections that we neglect each other. We don’t need to reject or disparage technology. We need to put it in its place” (295)In other words, technology is a tool that can be used for either good or evil.Turkle’s focus on the individual response to technology is no accident. Turkle describes herself as: “the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, the founder and director of the MIT initiative on Technology and Self, and a licensed clinical psychologist.”[1] Her background as a psychologist shows through clearly in her choice of topics to discuss and in her extensive use of case studies to authenticate her points. An economist or sociologist might easily have focused more on questions of productivity and institutional change, but Turkle never goes there. Here the focus is on responses by individuals to technology—no military drones, no self-driving cars, no targeted advertising, no robotic assembly lines, no wiz bang. Turkle’s perspective is reflective, fresh. Her special concern is for children.Let me focus a minute on Turkle’s two parts: robotics and networking.Robotics. As a member of the MIT faculty, Turkle has special access to the MIT robotics lab where her work focuses on social robots, especially robotic toys like Tamagotchi, Furbi, Merlin, My Real Baby, Cog, Kismit, and so on. Turkle writes:“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.” (1)Unlike Barbie, who invites you to project your issues and emotions on the doll in a kind of Rorshach test, these toys interact, talk, and appear to learn with you—what Turkle describes as a “new psychology of engagement” (38). In other words, the relationship possible with these robots is much more complex than with traditional toys. For example, citing Baird, she asks:“How long can you hold the object [a toy, an animal, or a robot] upside down before your emotions make you turn it back?” (45)With a toy, no one cares if you abuse it; with a gerbil, abuse is seen as cruel and is discouraged by most adults; but with a robot, like Furby, that complains, how do you respond—do you feel an ethical dilemma? Why? Turkle observes: “We are at the point of seeing digital objects as both creatures and machines.” (46)As part of her research, Turkle would lend these robotic toys to children and adults and then return after two weeks to interview them about their experiences and retrieve the toys. Frequently, the interviews would be postponed as the recipients—even the adults—did not want to give up the toys. Occasionally, this issue posed embarrassment, such as when a grandmother obviously preferred a robot, such as My Real Baby, to spending time with their own grandchildren (118). This happened so often that Turkle stopped trying to retrieve the robots after the interviews.Networking. The immensity of telephone and computer networks. Not only do we have the ability to contact anyone, anywhere on earth; we never really leave home. Turkle writes:“When I grew up the idea of ‘global village’ was an abstraction. My daughter lives something concrete. Emotionally, socially, wherever she goes, she never leaves home.” (156)This level of connectedness poses a challenge for adolescents who have a developmental need to separate themselves from their parents (174).Especially in American culture, individual autonomy is a cultural icon. In my own experience as a foreign student, the current level of connection made possible through cell phones and the internet was unthinkable. During my year in Germany, for example, telephone calls were so expensive that my gift for Christmas from my host family was a call home. My remoteness during the year disrupted a number of relationships, particularly with my parents [2], but I was well-prepared for this separation having worked summers as a camp counselor in high school and attended college out of state. By contrast, my own kids have had cell phones since high school and are seldom out of touch with their mother for more than a few days.Turkle talks about kids using texting to validate emotions even before they are fully aware of them. In effect, they poll their friends on how they should feel about things or test out emotions before fully investing in them (175-177). She writes:“in the psychoanalytical tradition, one speaks about narcissism not to indicate people who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support. It cannot tolerate the complex demands of other people but tries to relate to them by distorting who they are and splitting off what it needs, what it can use.” (177)So here we have a niche for technology—to insulate people from the push and pull of normal, complex human interaction. What is perhaps surprising is that kids that text constantly are often texting their own parents (178)—which suggests the need for a mature and informed parenting style.Wow. I never felt like a fully trained parent—how about you?Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together is hugely interesting, informative, and accessible read. College professors looking for insight in discussing the role of technology should consider this book. I would certainly consider reading the other books in this trilogy.[1] [...][2] At one point the year after I returned home I visited relatives and attended a dinner party. No one felt comfortable talking with me. Finally, I learned why—my farm relatives could not imagine that a world traveler, such as myself, would find talking to them interesting to speak with. Once we got over that point, things picked up and returned to a more normal interaction.

The other day, located at the museum of civilization in Quebec City (English translation) was an exhibit showcasing the dangers of technology and a room where would put under facial recognition technologies. The exhibit itself was an attempt to have a social discourse around aspects of technologies showcasing a strange scenario of a world that we are living in now, a technological revolution. Located on the corner of one of the exhibits was Sherry Turkle's Alone Together works, which maybe one day will be looked at as a relic in a museum. The exhibit itself, sort of like this book, is more or less the most tame version possible. Technology itself seems to have a spectacle that Debord which sole goal is to prevent a social discourse or the Foucauldian conception of an inverse one referred to as a Panopticon.Strangely, the being that is Sauron, the all seeing eye where nothing escapes its gaze in the land of Mordor is I think a good metaphor for data collection and at times does remind me of a more fully realized version. We are certainly way past both along with Deleuzian's postscripts of society of control and are in the third stage where many issues like this are ignored for some reason and never discussed.There are numerous discussions about other things and almost all of them have done little to nothing to alleviate the subject or create any type of discourse, I think this is largely built around the utilitarian utopia or perhaps it is more the telos (end of history) we are following where the end justifies the means and we must take our destiny into our own hands.Maybe, its the dialectic toward synthesis of technology being an apocalyptic end to the world or being viewed as its binary opposite where it is viewed as super positive and innovative. Either way, it doesn't matter, it will still keep happening and won't matter, all it takes is preconditioning and ensuring that through the study of knowledge that certain areas can be manipulated and create addictions to technology, something that has already happened and of course there was no discussion around that and at the very least will maybe in a few decades if regulated, just become another addiction like cigarette warning labels with varying degrees of illegality.Lately, there has been a push for people to be immortal beings or robots. Where people wish to become AI or something, without any possible agenda, losing all sense of privacy, presumably working toward a conquering of the right to disappear or to be immortal, there is a radical stance, that Jaron Lanier has actively discussed in his other works. There is again genetics where potentiality can be repressed to ensure that individuals are designed a certain way but at the end of the day, it follows an individuals that have already been "normalized" or subjectified and more or less bring things further under control.There is now the strange avatar that is written on the internet or social media websites, one where people make presumptions and assume that person is real based upon what they say or their appearance of how they present their wall on Facebook or anything else really. As the reader knows, this is usually not the case and many find out the person they thought they knew wasn't real at all or there was an entire missing area that existed in the real world occurring simultaneously, that if known, would provide clarity would make sense and put an end to all discussion. The internet itself has become like other addictions or obsessions it is usually for me as a reader the last place I would ever expect to have any type of discussion and 9 times out of 10, I have been misinterpreted severely (reddit) and have watched with some horror as it has been taken out of context as I'm sure many have experienced themselves. It becomes more of a personal nightmare when others use the medium to write double meanings and then imagination, based on what the readers think takes over and one usually sees flame wars on various debates and forums, where no sense of anything is reached and its difficult to know who or what is even real or believes it at that point. There's the expectation that those on the internet can be mature and tell the truth, and in time, it becomes obvious that's non-existent not to say completely impossible.There is also the aspect that everything has become distorted with fake news and reliability is put into the question, along with a certain unwellness as Turkle showcases here where people become more isolated. If we forcibly evolve the human being, (we have already done this with the destruction of the environment), we will create more of an imperfect world of artifice where humans will become more experimental I guess following a continuous deferment of knowledge toward reason and is very similar to a globe that is in the hand of another that designed it or well designed the future generations. I think if these were discussed I might begin to pay attention to the field but the waves have been non-existent at best. I found all one can do is perhaps bear witness to our destruction if we aren't consumed in the next several centuries or so. Like most things none of the things that have happened up till now needed to play out the way they did and it still happened. I highly doubt anything will change, which has continuously declined over the years. Instead, it is simply the world people want, which is too bad of course, if there is another life after this one, like some sort option, I would have to do a massive evaluation at this point.So in time as a reader, I may say more around the subject if I noticed some type of social discourse, but for now pretty non-existent and tame overall. You would need at the very least a second progressive era to counter it and that's non-existent we are outdoing the 20th century gilded age and with that maybe some day it may change. Until then, no social discourse and tame books like this one. I did attempt to name drop areas for more interested readers to broaden their perspectives and get a full picture from another side. That doesn't mean an endorsement from me, its more attempting to help the reader go down other routes if interested, because the field itself is tame and we are at a very bad turning point.

This book is interesting (and moving and melancholy at times), and an insightful journey through social robotics and people obsessed with the internet.For the generalist reader, this deserves five stars. It gives a nice 'tour' of the issues and tells it like it is in a narrative, engaging way. Well written, but several typos in the central chapters; these didn't impede the meaning but do show poor copyediting.As an academic text, this only deserves two or three stars. Although the author is a trained psychologist, the psychological work in this seems very thin at best, and utterly unsubstantiated at worst. In other words, the author makes claims about the mental states of case study participants - particularly the children - which are not supported by references to any studies, theories, evidence etc. This gives the impression of "armchair psychology" - jumping to stereotypical conclusions that any untrained pleb could have made. E.g. that kids whose parents work long hours are neglected and desperate for attention, and suchlike. These inferences may well be true in the cases outlined, but without references to actual *studies* or at least psychological theories, explanations of methodology, how and why conclusions were reached (etc), the book is of little use to the academic reader.But as I said, it's an accessible and enjoyable read for the generalist audience. I would have just liked more endnotes, or a couple of methodological chapters which would be useful to the academic reader.

I still think about this book, even a couple of years after I read it - perhaps because what it has to say is increasingly relevant. Although I think the chapters on robots are less relevant and less interesting (who uses tomogotchi anymore?), I think what they have to say about humans emotionally identifying with technology does set the reader up for the very important second half of the book, which talks about how our social relationships have been heavily influences by technology. It surprised me, for example, that teenagers never use the telephone anymore because it causes so much anxiety! That spontaneous-being in the world has kind of ceased to exist, only to be replaced by the well-crafted social media persona. The proposed effects of this are both interesting and devastating and I think everyone - especially parents - should read this book. In fact, I hope she writes an update in a few years so we can chart how we've progressed in an increasingly digital environment. (I don't, for the record, think that the internet is a bad thing! Just that we should all be more aware of how we use it and how it impacts and will impact our lives.)

A highly thoughtful elaboration of key ethical issues concerning us today and into the foreseeable future. The blending of Sherry Turkle's personal voice with her considerable experience and diligent research produced a most authentic view of very complex processes that need figuring out in both philosophical and practical ways. The story of the journalistic who conflated marriage to robots with same-sex marriage was a sobering moment in the book in ways which resonating with the trouble with what we now should consider as enlightened or regressive politically. I'm motivated to go back and re-read all of Turkle's works for their deep sense of hope blended the need to just 'keep thinking'.

Loved this book. Great read. Was on my masters reading list and genuinely enjoyed it (not just because I had to!)

A thought provoking read. With three teenagers in the house it is good to have some evidence based understanding of the potential effects of technology on our lives.