the family that is doing well enough to buy and read her new book may learn to limit its exposure to technology and do even better. But what of the great mass of people too anxious or lonely to resist the lure of tech, too poor or overworked to escape the vicious circles?
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Sherry Turkle’s ‘Reclaiming Conversation’
Here is a review of Turkle's book by Jonathan Frazen, the author, most recently, of “The Kraus Project” and the novel “Purity." I liked it for its nuanced point of view, noting that not everyone has the luxury of getting off their phones. For example, he says,
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Hmm, this is kind of ironic, don't you think? Reading an article online that discusses how to do better without technology and we are actually using technology reading it! Unfortunately, that is life now, and it will keep changing towards that way. Technology has change every single way in how we are living today, communication is the principal, but even how we listen to music using wireless headphones instead of enjoying it loud. I totally agree with Sherry when saying "When you speak to people in person, you’re forced to recognize their full human reality", probably we are able to talk to more people, and to people that is far from us, using technology but we are not really feeling it as if that was in person. I will give a personal example of one of my best friends when she went abroad, she used to talk everyday with her parents and she though everything was ok, but when she came back she realized that her mom was in treatment for the depression twice a week just because she was far away. Technology might helped them to be in contact and make sure everything was going well, but she wasn't feeling the reality of the situation at all.
ReplyDeleteLet's be clear. Sherry Turkle is a professor at MIT and has been studying how people use technology for most of her life. She uses technology to write her papers, grade papers, text people. She was not advocating techno-phobia, but was arguing that there is a time and place for it. Hanging on to it for all conversations is what is worrisome. So, not really funny at all. Just life and figuring out its limits.
DeleteThere is convenience in technology but we must learn to have a balance. There are many things in society that did not exist back in the past. Two of these things are the current school and social media that is ubiquitous in our society. According to Dunbar's number, we evolved from a Tribal society and the maximum amount of close relationships that we can have amount to no more. However, even that number is too high. As we know more people the individual quality of each relationship decreases. We can't go back to the past, however, as so its up to each individual person to balance the benefits of their relationships and technology.
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