Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkleis the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She obtained a BA in Social Studies and later a Ph.D. in Sociology and Personality Psychology at Harvard University. She now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. She has written several books focusing on the psychology of human relationships with technology, especially in the realm of how people relate to computational objects...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth18 June 1948
CountryUnited States of America
Sherry Turkle quotes about
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.
Technology doesn't just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.
We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.
The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.
Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation.
It’s a way of life to be always texting and when you looks at these texts it really is thoughts in formation. I do studies where I just sit for hours and hours at red lights watching people unable to tolerate being alone. Its as though being along has become a problem that needs to be solved and then technology presents itself as a solution to this problem…Being alone is not a problem that needs to be solved. The capacity for solitude is a very important human skill.
Loneliness is failed solitude.
People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of Wired magazine. Then things began to change. In the early 80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.
Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?
Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.
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.
We're letting [technology] take us places that we don't want to go.
Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.