Ideas from the Speech
''We're lonely, but we are afraind of intimacy.''
''There's plenty of time for us to reconsider how we use it, how we build it . I'm not suggesting that we turn way from our devices, just that we develop a more self-aware relationship with them, with each other and with ourselvs. ''
''We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits. Because it's when we stumble or hesitate or lose our words that we reveal ourselves to each other.''
''Techology is making a bid to redefine human connection --- how we care for each other, how we care for ourselves --- but it's also giving us the opportunity to affirm our values and our direction. ''
''We're drawn to virtual romance, to computer games that seem like world, to the idea that robots will someday be our true companies. We spend an evening on the social network instead of going to the pub with friends. ''
''But our fantasies of substitution have cost us. Now we all need to focus on the many, many ways technology can lead us back to our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own politics, our own planet. They need us. Let's talk about how we can use digital technology, the technology of our dreams, to make this life we can love.''
------ Sherry Turkle
Summary
Sherry comments that today people use technology to connect more often than the face-to-face connection. People are lonely while they are afraid of intimacy. They spend overweight time on the virtual world to the connection rather than focus on the real world. However, she ends her conversation with a wish that technology could lead people back to the real lives, communities, and the actual planet.
Reflection
Nowadays, people would have forgotten the lives without technology for communication. They cannot image the life without cellphone and computers, which provide them more opportunities to ''communicate'' with others.
However, we need to ask ourselves a question that ''Does technology really provide us the real connection?'' With technology, we don't need to see friends face-to-face in the same place. We don't need to talk with them --- just text. We focus more on the messages from our Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, etc rather than the word from our friends and families next to us. We really need to reconsider the effect the technology bring about and how to use it to creat a better world. We cannot deny the positive effect the technology has for us and we are still enjoying this. What we should do is not to let it develop in the wrong direction.
Further Reading
- Alone Together by Sherry Turkle http://alonetogetherbook.com/
- Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle – review by Rafael Behr
- TEDxUIUC - Sherry Turkle - Alone Together
- "Alone Together": An MIT Professor's New Book Urges Us to Unplug
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