Sherry Turkle: If behind popular fascination with Freudian theory ther...

Technology doesn't just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.

Sherry Turkle

who-we-are technology doe

We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

Sherry Turkle

creating technology friendship

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. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.

Sherry Turkle

seductive technology lonely

Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.

Sherry Turkle

being-alone expectations feelings

What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.

Sherry Turkle

seductive phones light

These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they tend to reach for a device. In a movie theater, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves.

Sherry Turkle

boredom people thinking

It all stems from the same thing - which is that when we are face to face - and this is what I think is so ironic about Facebook being called Facebook, because we are not face to face on Facebook ... when we are face to face, we are inhibited by the presence of the other. We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

Sherry Turkle

ironic faces thinking

We're too busy communicating to think, too busy communicating to connect, and sometimes we're too busy communicating to create. This is true for individuals and also true for organizations.

Sherry Turkle

busy sometimes thinking

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

Sherry Turkle

technology motivation inspiration

What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

Sherry Turkle

technology spirit easy

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

Sherry Turkle

computer powerful

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

Sherry Turkle

sacrifice technology caring

People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.

Sherry Turkle

seductive lonely people

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.

Sherry Turkle

technology self mean

Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of the people [they're] with and this other reality.

Sherry Turkle

attention reality people

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.

Sherry Turkle

new-things progress

We're smitten with technology. And we're afraid, like young lovers, that too much talking might spoil the romance. But it's time to talk.

Sherry Turkle

technology motivation inspiration

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

Sherry Turkle

motivation lonely inspiration

Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.

Sherry Turkle

thumbs-down thumbs-up mean

we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.

Sherry Turkle

determined quality giving

If behind popular fascination with Freudian theory there was a nervous, often guilty preoccupation with the self as sexual, behind increasing interest in computational interpretations of mind is an equally nervous preoccupation with the self as machine.