Authentic And Inauthentic Life In Alone Together: An Analysis

The world is full of imagination, and the imagination will never stop; however, imagines can bring human beings into both authentic and inauthentic life. People imagine things through technology and counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking makes people consider the possibilities and predict outcomes for the future, which brings human beings into authentic lives. Technologies have made people’s lives become much easier, which also make the humans’ relationships become more distant from each other, and create environments for the inauthentic life. This concept can be seen in both “Alone Together”, by Sherry Turkle, and “Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?” by Alison Gopnik. In “Alone Together”, Turkle addresses the ideas of the

Inauthentic life is created by over-relying on technology, but authentic life still exists because of people have the knowledge to make the imagination come true. Technologies are shown everywhere in human beings’ lives, for example, robots, cell phones, computers, etc. From the article “Alone Together”, Turkle introduces the idea of authenticity by “ the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to relate to the other because of a shared store of human experiences” (Turkle, P267), and the intimacy is the exact opposite of the authenticity. Then, Turkle introduces the story of a graduate student Anne, who wants to have a boyfriend with caring behaviors, “she [Anne] confided that she would trade in her boyfriend ‘for a sophisticated Japanese robot’ if the robot would produce what she called ‘caring behavior.’ She [Anne] told me that she relied on a ‘felling of civility in the house’. She did not want to be alone” (Turkle P269). This relationship between Anne and her “boyfriend”-robot will be guaranteed. At least for Anne, Robot boyfriend will never leave or cheat on her, and she will not feel alone anymore. By having a boyfriend or