Alone Together

Dr. Sherry Turkle, who we saw last week in the video clip that spoke about how we are all distracted by technology (click here to see the entire Frontline episode) has just published a book on the subject called Alone Together.

As this article points out, she is a professor of the social studies of science at MIT and bases her work on the anthropological data collection method known as ethnography (which we will be talking about in class on Tuesday). As she points out in this interview, she is no Luddite, but feels that:

"Every technology becomes our partner, because we make it, and then it makes and shapes us in return, and it takes a little time for us to see how that process of mutual unfolding goes. Every technology gives us the opportunity to say, Is this technology serving our human values? And if not, the opportunity to make corrections. This book is meant to be part a conversation to make corrections. I think there are ways in which we're constantly communicating and yet not making enough good connections, in a way that's to our detriment, to the detriment of our families and to our business organizations."