Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

809 Words2 Pages

The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole. To start off with, Turkle vividly describes how robots are used as a substitute for other people or things and help imagine robots in every day life. My Real Baby was noted as an example, which quickly turned into My Real Babysitter. My Real Babysitter was an idea formed from the idea that children are left alone all too often and babysitters are sometimes hard to come by in cases of emergencies. This robotic babysitter would replace the human version, integrating itself into daily life. The children explained that there is only so much a robot babysitter would do and it wouldn’t create an even playing field between human and robotic babysitters. Turkle came to the conclusion that children with lively and creative babysitters would rather keep theirs and children with boring babysitters would prefer the robotic version. The AIBO, a robotic dog, was also used as an example in the novel. In the case of eight-year-old Zara, she says that with a teddy bear you have to put in the work to create the teddy bears thoughts and feeling, but, with the AIBO, it already thinks what it wants and is expressing. Also, if the robotic dog is bugging you, ... ... middle of paper ... ...ered to our mobile devices, pushing ourselves into being alone. Turkle says, “…the network prepares us for the ‘relationships with less’ that robots provide.” (p154). We are no longer connected based on how close we are to each other, but how available our mobile devices are to us at the moment. We always have our mobile devices on us, therefore making us think we are always connected. She states that the device serves as a portal to being tethered to the people and places. She goes further to describe how these mobile devices can symbolize themselves marking themselves as alone. I definitely agree with this point. When I am placed in an uncomfortable position in a crowded place, I immediately take out my phone and fiddle around hoping nobody will bother me. It symbolizes my departure in the situation from the physical realm into the mobile and technological realm.

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