Robots

While reading chapters one and two of Turkle I found myself agreeing with many things that she was implying throughout the reading.  How was a child able to be so attached to a robot, such as a furbie that is not even alive? When you are reading, you begin thinking that these ideas and creations are ridiculous and that the way children and grown adults are getting so emotionally and physically attached to these “things” is just unbelievable. Then, by the end of the videos, I actually began to feel sympathy for the robots that were falling in love, with everyone around watching as they had their first encounter with “love”.

In the world we are living in today, children do not get the attention that they need from their parents and turn to robots for attention or even toys.  People in general turn to objects for emotion and love. For example, the little girl in the first video was sitting in the closet and her mother said to her “don’t ever get married and don’t ever have kids” to her own daughter. When that little girl grew up, she did not even know how to show the robot baby real attention and the fact that it was a robot gave her a false idea of what a real baby is. The children turned to the furbies for attention and affection, but the children get a false idea of real feelings and real emotion. I believe that it is not okay to give these people and children that false hope, it just pushes them away from showing their true feeling to real people and not objects. People are beginning to turn to robots or objects and hide their true feeling, which is very unhealthy. For example, the man in the video had a hologram of his wife who passed because let go of his past and face his feelings.

In conclusion, I would have to agree with Turkle. I believe that our society is becoming technological and that it’s causing a false sense of people feelings and who people really are. In the end it’s something else for people to hide behind.