Sherry Turkle (2011). 'Alone Together'
https://www.youtube.com/embed/MtLVCpZIiNs
Context: This talk by Sherry Turkle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Turkle "was recorded at TEDxUIUC 2011 (02/19/11), which was organized at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by a group of students led by Cristian Mitreanu". https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/922 Transcript: "Often we are too busy communicating to think. Too busy communicating to create, too busy communicating to really connect with the people we're with in the ways that would really count. In continual contact, we're alone together. To paraphrase Thoreau, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau where do we live and what do we live for in our new tethered lives or in other words, what do we have, now that we have what we say we want, now that we have what technology makes easy? In corporations, among circles of teenage and adult friends, within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather text or send an email than talk face to face. Some who say I live my life on my Blackberry, are forthright about avoiding real-time commitment of a phone call. When you text, one young man says, you have more time to think about what you're writing on the telephone too much might show. Here we use technology to dial down human contact and there's that Goldilocks thing. To titrate it's nature and extent. People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay. And we confront a paradox. We insist that our world is increasingly complex yet we've created a communication's culture that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think, uninterrupted we've ramp up the volume and velocity of communication but we start to expect fast answers. And in order to get them we ask each other simpler questions, we start to dumb down our communication, even on the most important matters. Shakespeare might have said, we are consumed with that which we are nourished by. This flood of connection affects the development of the self in many ways, here I am just going to mention one of them. Let's call it, I share therefore I am. For so many I have studied, things go from I have a feeling, I want to make a call, to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text. In other words the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it. More than this, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone. To gather oneself, there is a great psychological truth. If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. For adult and child having gotten into the habit of constant connection, we risk losing our capacity for the kind of solitude that energises and that restores." Criticism: As Susan Greenfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Greenfield,_Baroness_Greenfield explains "When we of the 20th century read a book, most usually the author takes you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative series of interconnected steps. It may not be a journey with which you agree or that you enjoy, but none the less as you turn the pages one train of thought succeeds the last in a logical fashion. We can then of course compare one narrative with another. In so doing we start to build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys, which in turn will influence our individualised framework. One might argue that this is the basis of education – education as we know it. It is the building up of a personalised conceptual framework, where we can relate incoming information to what we know already. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance. Traditional education has enabled us, if you like, to turn information into knowledge. Now imagine that there is no robust conceptual framework. Imagine that you are sitting in front of a multimedia presentation where you are unable, because you have not had the experience of many different intellectual journeys, to evaluate what is flashing up on the screen. The most immediate reaction instead would be to place a premium on the most obvious feature, the immediate sensory content – we could call it the 'yuk' or 'wow' factor. You would be having an experience rather than learning. Here sounds and sights of a fast–paced, fast–moving, multimedia presentation would displace any time for reflection or any idiosyncratic or imaginative connections that we might make as we turn the pages and then stare at the wall to reflect" (House of Lords debates, 20 April 2006, 3:18 pm : Column 1220). Note: that in making her point, Greenfield cites Kevin Kelly i.e. https://newpractices.co.uk/Horizons/#yDYCf4ONh5M Bibliography: Turkle, S. (2011). 'Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other'. New York, NY, Basic Books. https://www.mediastudies.asia/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Sherry_Turkle_Alone_Together.pdf Wintour, P. (2009, February 24). "Facebook et al risk 'infantilising' the human mind". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains Lords Hansard. (2026). 'Lords Hansard text for 20 Apr 2006 (60420-18)'. Parliament.uk. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldhansrd/vo060420/text/60420-18.htm#60420-18_spnew3 http://folksonomy.simonperkins.co.uk/?permalink=615
