Sherry Turkle Alone Together Excerpt Reading Culture

Function 2 of Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together presents the networked self. Turkle has been called 'the anthropologist of cyberspace.' Her book reads like an ethnography of our homo society today. While in Part 1 (my previous post) she has shown how we are receptive to robotics to solve our problems, Function 2 paints a picture of how we accept embraced digital technology to seek the connections that we require. The social media phenom is no longer the sectional description of the immature. Turkle cites that "the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook is adults from thirty-v to forty-iv."

I've constitute some more recent data (August, 2010) indicating that social networking use amid Internet users age l and above has increased from 22% to 42% in one year. At present, more than than ever, the popularity of social networking has permeated into all strata of our demographics.

This latter part of Turkle's book addresses some of the consequences.

The Tethered Self

First off, nosotros're always on, no downward time. Specially those with a smart phone, it keeps us connected no matter where nosotros are.  Turkle has provided u.s.a. with numerous examples like Robin, 26, a copywriter in a enervating advertizing agency:

If I'm not in impact, I feel almost featherbrained. Equally though something is wrong, something terrible is wrong.

Bank check where you put your cell telephone when you get out. In your pocket? Purse? Where you lot put information technology may well indicate how tethered and dependent you are.

Robin holds her BlackBerry; at meals, she sets information technology on the table near her, touching it frequently.

So you think y'all tin can place it out of accomplish. An art critic with a book borderline took desperate measures:

I went away to a motel. And I left my cell phone in the car. In the trunk. My thought was that perchance I would bank check it in one case a day. I kept walking out of the house to open the body and check the phone. I felt like an addict…

As to the form of communication, emails take already become obsolete among those 25 and younger. They use emails only for more 'formal' purposes, like job hunting. Texting is more than instant and coincidental.

Needless to say, the phone has become archaic among the immature:

 'So many people hate the telephone,' says Elaine, seventeen… 'It'due south all texting and messaging.'

A sixteen twelvemonth-quondam says:

When you text, yous take more time to retrieve about what yous're writing… On the telephone, too much might prove.

Turkle notes that such a phenomenon may be more wide-spread than we think. She writes:

Teenagers flee the telephone. Perhaps more than surprisingly, and then practise adults. They merits exhaustion and lack of time; always on call, with their fourth dimension highly leveraged through multitasking, they avoid voice communication outside of a pocket-size circle because it demands their full attention when they don't want to give it.

Not but that, the real security of non-confront-to-face and voiceless communication is the condom it offers. Backside the screen, i can hide… "On the telephone, too much might show."

Of class, we must not deny the benefits of technology, particularly for parents with children. A prison cell phone is probably the all-time assurance parents can have. For those with college-historic period children, nosotros too can constantly proceed in contact through all sorts of features on our mobile devices. Simply beyond the result of tethering, what take social media and our über connected society done to our values? Turkle notes:

These days, cultural norms are rapidly shifting. We used to equate growing upwards with the ability to function independently. These days ever-on connection leads us to reconsider the virtues of a more collaborative cocky. All questions about autonomy await different if, on a daily basis, we are together fifty-fifty when we are alone. (p. 169)

Indeed, collaboration has become the virtue of our time… whether it is a schoolhouse project, or a creative endeavor, or a business plan. Only for i who prize independent thinking and alone quietude, I can't aid but ponder the downside of perfunctory collaboration. Information technology could be a practiced thing if it is commonage wisdom at work. Even so, what if it is mass sentiment, or, as the popular notion today, a view 'gone viral'.  Our 'likes' and 'dislikes' seem to be influenced more and more by what others are saying. Is there a place for independent thinking? Tin we however preserve some privacy of heed, cleave out a solitude but reserved for our own thoughts and feelings, insulated from the madding crowd? Or, is such a piece of solitude even desirable anymore?

.

.

Avatars and Identities

But it may non be all about business concern, or connecting with real life friends and associates that technology has fabricated possible. Net has allowed usa to prefer a different identity, building some other life altogether. Avatars and online games have made it possible for one to take on multiple roles, all of them but as existent. Using their mobile devices, people transport themselves to unlike realities simultaneously as they are living their existent life in the here and at present.

And it is this part of the book that is most disturbing to me.

In one of Turkle's studies, she follows Pete, 46, bringing his children to the playground one Sunday. Turkle observes adults there divide their attending between children and their mobile devices, at which I'1000 no longer surprised.  Just here's the twist to Pete's case. With one hand, Pete pushes his six twelvemonth-old on the swing, and with his other hand he uses his jail cell phone to step into his other identity, an Avatar called 'Rolo' in 2nd Life, a virtual identify that is "not a game because there'southward no winning, just living".

Pete lives as 'Rolo' in Second Life. He is married to 'Jade', some other Avatar, after an "elaborate Second Life ceremony more than a year earlier, surrounded by their virtual best friends." Pete has an intimate human relationship with Jade, whom he describes as "intelligent, passionate, and easy to talk to", even though he knows very well that 'Jade' could be anyone, of whatever age and gender. Hither's what Pete says about his other married life:

Second Life gives me a better relationship than I have in real life. This is where I feel well-nigh myself. Jade accepts who I am. My relationship with Jade makes it possible for me to stay in my matrimony, with my family.

Borders sure take blurred in our digital age. Is this considered a kind of extramarital affair? To Pete, this virtual marriage is an essential function of his life-mix, some other of our postmodern notions. Life-mix is "the mash-up of what you have on- and off-line."

And so, it's no longer "multi-tasking" whatsoever more, but "multi-lifing". With all the avatars we tin claim online, we can accept multiple identities. I tin can't help but ask: Just which ane is existent? I also wonder how many are projecting their real-life identity and true cocky on Facebook, blogs or Twitter? Only the ultimate questions probably would exist: What is 'existent life' anyway, or the 'true self'? Does 'actuality' nevertheless matter? Is information technology even definable?

Office i of Solitary Together shows people's positive reception of robots, those fake human being machines. Part 2 is in a similar vein, depicting a order that embraces simulated lives through avatars, and faux relationships through virtual connections. We may be more connected always, but we are isolated. Lone, but we are alone together.

In her concluding affiliate, Turkle writes:

We brag about how many nosotros take 'friended' on Facebook, nonetheless Americans say they accept fewer friends than earlier. When asked in whom they can confide and to whom they turn in an emergency, more than and more say that their but resource is their family unit.

The ties we form through the Internet are non, in the end, the ties that demark. Simply they are the ties that preoccupy.

And I must mention this case. Turkle has a one-time colleague, Richard, who has been left severely disabled by an automobile accident. Bars to a wheelchair in his domicile. He has had his share of abusive carers…

Some… hurt you because they are unskilled, and some hurt you considering they hateful to. I had both. One of them, she pulled me by the hair. One dragged me by my tubes. A robot would never do that," he says. And then he adds: "Merely you know, in the end, that person who dragged me by my tubes had a story. I could find out about information technology. She had a story."

For Richard, being with a person, even an unpleasant, sadistic person, makes him feel that he is still alive… For him, nobility requires a feeling of authenticity, a sense of being continued to the human narrative. It helps sustain him. Although he would not desire his life endangered, he prefers the sadist to the robot.

Richard might have pointed to what it ways to be human. I wish I could quote more, but my mail service is likewise long.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More than from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle. Bones Books, New York, 2011, 360 pages.

~~~ 1/two Ripples

CLICK HERE to hear Sherry Turkle talk on reclaiming conversations.

CLICK HERE to an interview with Sherry Turkle

CLICK HERE to read my post "Alone Together by Sherry Turkle, Function i"

CLICK HERE to read my mail service "No Texting for Lent and The Terminate of Solitude"

Both photos on this post are taken past Arti of Ripple Effects. Top: One of the Thousand Islands, Kingston, Ontario, Sept. 2007. Bottom: Actuality & the Networked Cocky, March, 2011. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

hawkinshalas1936.blogspot.com

Source: https://rippleeffects.reviews/2011/03/23/alone-together-by-sherry-turkle-part-2/

Share this post