As more and more people form political alliances using disembodied communications technologies, the kinds of identities that matter seem also to shift (Turkle 1995).
The title and tagline of a book by Sherry Turkle of MIT seem to sum up something real: "Alone Together—Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other .Then again, the devices really do bring people closer together.
According to MIT's Sherry Turkle, author of the new book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, we as a society are experiencing a "robotic moment".
Turkle writes persuasively about the ways that the "continual partial attention" that our devices induce (and demand) denature human connections, even tenuous ones.
Sherry Turkle is concerned, based on her prior work with computers and virtual reality, that there can be negative effects of technology in causing people to retreat from the hard work of human social contact.
"A lot of people are going through the torments of the damned," Turkle said recently, over the telephone.
"I think we're on a learning curve," Turkle told me.
Thirty years ago, Turkle began studying the impact of sophisticated technologies, including virtual-reality computer games and robots, on emotional development in children and social relationships among adults.
Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T. who has expertise in psychology and sociology, is concerned about both the stated need for robots and, she says, the risks they pose to "the most vulnerable populations — children and elders".
As Sherry Turkle of M.I.T. points out in the article, we tend to project our own feelings and thoughts onto the robot.
