Synopses & Reviews
Consider Facebook—it's human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them.
In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It's a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of today's self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.
Review
"Turkle's prescient book makes a strong case that what was meant to be a way to facilitate communications has pushed people closer to their machines and further away from each other." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Synopsis
MIT professor Sherry Turkle tackles the precarious balance between isolation and connectivity introduced by the growth of social networking technologies.
About the Author
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is frequently interviewed in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on media outlets including CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and NPR. A licensed clinical psychologist, she received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is the author of several books, including Psychoanalytic Politics, The Second Self, Life on the Screen, and Simulation and Its Discontents. Sherry lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Laural Merlington has recorded well over one hundred audiobooks, including works by Margaret Atwood and Alice Hoffman, and is the recipient of several AudioFile Earphones Awards. An Audie Award nominee, she has also directed over one hundred audiobooks. She has performed and directed for thirty years in theaters throughout the country. In addition to her extensive theater and voice-over work, Laural teaches college in her home state of Michigan.