And by not developing this capacity for solitude, we're not doing our children a favor.

I even believe that if you don't teach your children to be alone, they'll only know how to be lonely. Well, I call it 'alone together.' That we're moving to a space where we feel free to respond to the three promises that technology now makes us, that we can always be heard, that we can be wherever we want to be, and that we never have to be alone.Īnd that third promise actually is terribly important because I believe that the capacity for solitude is terribly important to develop. What are you thinking as you look at that? I don’t think it’s real.ĭid you guys see the lineup for cars …wasted … the Empire State Building is like, really close to it. …But like if you…it’s not – it’s not real – I saw a video the other day that I want to share with you. Her most recent sums up her conclusions: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. She’s a clinical psychologist who was one of the first to study the impact of computers on culture and society.Ī professor at MIT and Director of that school’s Initiative on Technology and Self, she’s written several important books based on deep research and hundreds of interviews with children and adults alike. So I’ve come to Sherry Turkle to try to explain how and why. Our devices change not only what we do but also who we are. For every new friend meeting through cyberspace, there’s the risk of estrangement from the real world. For every Wikileak and revealed secret, there’s the encroachment on personal privacy by the NSA. For every Arab Spring or political movement using social media to foment change, there may also be campaigns of abuse and hate. Like anything hurtling us forward at breakneck speed, the advancements are great, and so are the dangers. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg told a reporter that in 2016 - just three years from now - “people are going to be sharing eight to ten times as much stuff.” Facebook is not quite 10 years old, Twitter is younger still. The experience highlights just how our world has been engulfed by social media and how our technology has become a vital organ of our being.Īnd it's happened so fast. If you’ve ever lost your smartphone, as I have, you know it can feel like a death. Enough of politics, the debt and that spectacle in Washington.

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle