Thursday, March 28, 2013

Turkle on Twitter

See below for the transcript of a Twitter exchange with Sherry Turkle. The original can be found here.

A Twitterscript with Sherry Turkle, Founder of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self


By Susan Leem
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - 5:10am



For 20 years Sherry Turkle has asked unusual questions about the human side of technology. She wants to know how our relationship with devices affects our psychology, and why it is that “we no longer care if we are among life.” She’s referring to our love of gadgets, robots, and the way we obsess over email and smart phones, ultimately giving them highest priority in our social interactions.



Professor Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Her latest book is Alone Together.



We live-tweeted highlights of this 90-minute conversation, which we’re aggregating and posting here for those who weren’t able to follow along. Check out our Twitter stream next time at @BeingTweets.



1.“There’s a phenomenon where people feel their phone ringings when they’re not. It’s called the phantom ring.” - @STurkle 1:09 PM 22 Feb

2.“Just because we grew up with the internet we think that the internet is all grown up.” @STurkle 1:13 PM 22 Feb

3.“I get very discouraged that we don’t seem to have a taste for stopping and asking how can we make this work for us?”-@STurkle on technology 1:14 PM 22 Feb

4.“What is intimacy without privacy, what is democracy without privacy?” - @STurkle, author of “Alone Together” - http://bit.ly/cJxjOQ 1:16 PM 22 Feb

5.“If you don’t teach your children how to be alone, they’ll only always know how to be lonely.”-saying in psychology via @STurkle 1:28 PM 22 Feb

6.“You don’t want to be alone because you can’t think by yourself, you can’t feel by yourself.” - @STurkle on growing up with texting, etc. 1:30 PM 22 Feb

7.“It’s teenagers who say ‘My parents text at the dinner table.’” @STurkle on how children also want sacred spaces. 1:34 PM 22 Feb

8.@STurkle on rules for adults to create sacred spaces in family- put down the phone at dinner, moment of school pickup and on the playground. 1:40 PM 22 Feb

9.“The greatest gift you can give your child is to walk out of the house without your phone. Show your child what that looks like!” @STurkle 1:41 PM 22 Feb

10.“We have to ask ourselves what is served by having an always on, always on you, open to anyone who wants to reach us, way of life.”@STurkle 1:43 PM 22 Feb

11.“I love uses of technology that are positive and hopeful and exciting.” - Professor @STurkle author of “Alone Together.” 2:01 PM 22 Feb

12.“In a human conversation I’m talking to another person who understands the arc of a human life cycle.” -@STurkle 2:14 PM 22 Feb

13.“I don’t need to be right, but I do need to feel as though people understand what I’m trying to communicate.” -@STurkle on conversation. 2:16 PM 22 Feb

14.“Whether or not we want robots caring for our elderly will be one of the most humanistic conversations we’re going to have.” -@STurkle 2:17 PM 22 Feb

15.“This is a corporation, it isn’t your mother, and I think people forget that.” -@STurkle on Facebook 2:21 PM 22 Feb

16.“There’s a whole kind of robotics that’s really going to change the way people see the world.” -MIT professor @STurkle 2:23 PM 22 Feb

About the image: Sherry Turkle (photo: Peter Urban)






1 comment:

Unknown said...

I have recently joined the Twitter world after fighting it off for about 6 months. My friends finally convinced me and at times threatened to make me one! I think it is a bit ironic that Turkle is using technology to raise awareness of how much we rely on technology. But she does make valid points. The post about parents texting at the dinner table sticks out to me. We use to have family dinner every night when we were younger, but they have dwindled as we all grew older. At those family dinners, no cell phones were allowed. I wasnt even allowed to bring mine to the table. My mom and dad felt it took away from our family connections, and I tend to agree with them. We tend to be to involved with a small screen that we let the current world pass us by.