Just because you have technology does not mean you should be using it, all the time. Sherry Turkle’s insights into technology taking over humanity and close relationships are astounding
College kids with earplugs listening to radio on theirsmartphones, men in smart casuals texting feverishly on their Blackberrys,fashionistas browsing on their tech toys and all at a session on ‘Why AreRobots Becoming Human and Men Machines.’ Quite ironic, but not for SherryTurkle, as I meet her moments after she delivers her point blank study atTHINK. “I looked at the audience. People were writing emails while I wasspeaking. These people had paid good money to come to the conference. I gave agood presentation but people were looking at family photos on theirsmartphones, iPads. That kind of ability to divide their attention tomultitask, I don’t think that this was just for my session. There was thisfantastic presentation by a former Israeli Mossad Chief, who gave a rivetingpresentation on Israeli politics, Iran on dialogue. I was riveted. Peoplearound me were editing their photos, emailing”, observes Turkle.
For most of us, smitten by technology being on mobile phones24x7, being accessible, being tuned in might be a necessity, even a cool socialmore. But for Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the SocialStudies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,it is her business to know why people behave the way they do with technologysuch as mobile phones, smart phones, computers, tablets, etc. But doesn’t thisseem like science fiction, machines being equated with man. “Not at all. We arestudying effects of technology on people. To not study technologies and howthey socially effect people would be like putting our heads into sand. Anybodywho has seen families where parents are texting, as children are begging fortheir attention, would know how technology has been affecting us socially”,explains Turkle. Her seminal studies, Alone Together, had researched howadolescents were losing their attention spans and interest in science, of howover-excessive texting and an obsession in Facebook friends was making theindividual lonely.
“When I meet friends, I ask them to keep their cellphones onthe table”, says the Freud of technology, of a society that lives more onlinethan offline. “The value of the internet is that you got to know me to acertain level, but my coming here allows you to know me on another level,” sheremarks. But then isn’t that creating two different personalities like the wayFacebook does?
“What I found is you lose your friends, you lose yourcommunity and you get your Facebook friends, and you get your Facebookcommunities. They may have the same name but they don’t have the samecharacteristics or virtues even vices either. On a larger scale, we can let ourcommunities deteriorate, generations get smitten and then they realize. We arenot letting get our community projects done, which we used to enjoy. We don’thave communal institutions coming through. I don’t agree with Kevin Kelly inwhat technology wants, I take him on. What technology wants is giving too muchagency. Just because you have technology does not mean that you should be usingit. This is just a first generation phenomena. Hereafter, they will decide whatis good for them and what isn’t”.
But Sherry keeps the best for the last, “I have not studiedthe effect of technology on the East. But I am anxious to come back to India tostudy your family structure and how basics like texting, emails do to families,to relationships”. She will have aplenty there for a tech-crazy country whererelationships seemingly abound more online than offline.
