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. Its 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
"The author seems confident that human instinct will eventually intervene and prompt us into evasive action as soon as technology begins to increasingly dominate our lives....Despite the dry, clinical writing, Turkle provides potentially valuable social research." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Turkle emphasizes personal stories from computer gadgetry's front lines, which keeps her prose engaging and her message to the human species — to restrain ourselves from becoming technology's willing slaves instead of its guiding masters — loud and clear." Booklist
Synopsis
A wake-up call from a cyber-expert: our use of technology is fueling disturbing levels of isolation, leaving us incapable of distinguishing between true human connection and digital communication
Synopsis
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But, as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. As technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.
Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on hundreds of interviews, it describes new unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy, and solitude.
About the Author
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Authors Note: Turning Points
Introduction: Alone Together
PART ONE
The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies
1. Nearest Neighbors
2. Alive Enough
3. True Companions
4. Enchantment
5. Complicities
6. Loves Labor Lost
7. Communion
PART TWO
Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes
8. Always On
9. Growing Up Tethered
10. No Need to Call
11. Reduction and Betrayal
12. True Confessions
13. Anxiety
14. The Nostalgia of the Young
Conclusion: Necessary Conversations
Epilogue: The Letter