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The dark side of the digital age
By Jonah Lehrer |
January 23, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN 1995, Sherry Turkle, a professor of the "social studies of science" at MIT, published a book about identity in the digital age called "Life on the Screen." Turkle celebrated the freedom of online identity. Instead of being constrained by the responsibilities of real life, Turkle argued, people were using the Web to experiment, trying on personalities like pieces of clothing. As one online user told her, "You are who you pretend to be."
In Turkle's latest book, "Alone Together," this optimism is long gone. If the Internet of 1995 was a postmodern playhouse, allowing individuals to engage in unbridled expression, Turkle describes it today as a corporate trap, a ball and chain that keeps us tethered to the tiny screens of our cell phones, tapping out trite messages to stay in touch. She summarizes her new view of things with typical eloquence: "We expect more from technology and less from each other."
"Alone Together" is two separate books. The first half is about social robots, sci-fi androids that one day will sweep the floor, take care of our aging parents and provide reliable companionship. But she's most interested in our relationships with them. Turkle makes the troubling observation that we often seek robots as a solution to our own imperfections, as easy substitutes for difficulty of dealing with others.
After exploring social robots - we treat these objects like people - Turkle pivots to the online world, in which we have "invented ways of being with people that turn them into something close to objects."
She says the online world is no longer a space of freedom and re-invention. Instead, we are trapped by Facebook profiles and Google cache. We aren't "happy" anymore: we're a semicolon followed by a parenthesis.
In Turkle's latest book, "Alone Together," this optimism is long gone. If the Internet of 1995 was a postmodern playhouse, allowing individuals to engage in unbridled expression, Turkle describes it today as a corporate trap, a ball and chain that keeps us tethered to the tiny screens of our cell phones, tapping out trite messages to stay in touch. She summarizes her new view of things with typical eloquence: "We expect more from technology and less from each other."
"Alone Together" is two separate books. The first half is about social robots, sci-fi androids that one day will sweep the floor, take care of our aging parents and provide reliable companionship. But she's most interested in our relationships with them. Turkle makes the troubling observation that we often seek robots as a solution to our own imperfections, as easy substitutes for difficulty of dealing with others.
After exploring social robots - we treat these objects like people - Turkle pivots to the online world, in which we have "invented ways of being with people that turn them into something close to objects."
She says the online world is no longer a space of freedom and re-invention. Instead, we are trapped by Facebook profiles and Google cache. We aren't "happy" anymore: we're a semicolon followed by a parenthesis.
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