ResearchGate Logo

Discover the world's research

  • 20+ million members
  • 135+ million publications
  • 700k+ research projects

Join for free

Social Change Review ▪ Summer 2015 ▪ Vol. 13(1): 79-81

DOI: 10.1515/scr-2015-0010

Book Review

Sherry Turkle. 2012. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and

Less From Each Other. New York: Basic Books. 360 pp. ISBN: 978-0-465-03146-

7 (Paperback).

Reviewed by: Ali Shehzad Zaidi, State University of New York at Canton,

USA

Sherry Turkle's Alone Together, based on numerous interviews and case

histories, explores the sociological implications of artificial intelligence as it

pertains to robotic companions. The book, well-written and jargon-free, is

intended for informed but non-specialized readers. Turkle relates our

growing dependence on technology to diminished expectations of people. In

doing so, she memorably evokes the allure and limitations of technology,

thereby conveying its threat to society.

Turkle notes that, thanks to the internet, the workplace has become a

home intruder that displaces children as the focus of parental attention. Like

their parents, children are absorbed in electronic devices that hamper their

social development. The average teen, Turkle observes, sends three

thousand text messages a month and consequently often finds it difficult to

sit still during, say, a funeral service (p. xv, 296). 'They need time to discover

themselves, time to think,' Turkle says of adolescents. 'But technology, put

in the service of always-on communication and telegraphic speed and

brevity, has changed the rules of engagement with all of this. When is

downtime, when is stillness?' (p. 172). Turkle regards their privacy as central

to both democratic life and self-recognition (p. 277).

Turkle argues that technology is desensitizing us. She cites a

University of Michigan study showing a dramatic decline in empathy

among college students over the past three decades (p. 293, 345). A similar

Unauthenticated

Download Date | 8/17/15 4:11 AM

Book Review

Social Change Review ▪ Summer 2015 ▪ Vol. 13(1): 79-81

80

study, based on more than 16,000 responses on the Narcissistic Personality

Inventory, which asks college students such questions as 'If I ruled the

world, it would be a better place,' found that in 2006, two-thirds of the

students scored above average, a thirty percent increase compared to 1982

(Healy 2007). Although the effects of social media and technology are

difficult to quantify, Turkle nonetheless makes a convincing case that we

have become more self-absorbed.

However exotic, robotic dolls and pets cannot satisfy children who

want to be loved by objects that cannot feel. 'The first thing missing in a

companion robot,' notes Turkle, 'is alterity , the ability to see the world

through the eyes of another. Without alterity, there can be no empathy' (p.

55). Technology cannot fulfill a child's quest for affection and recognition, no

matter what feelings that child projects on to a robot. As Turkle observes:

'What we ask of robots shows us what we need' (p. 87).

For adults, the experience of robotic companions is just as

disappointing as it is for children. According to Turkle, the desire for robotic

judges, counselors, teachers, and pastors underscores our disillusionment

with people as well as a fascination with technology that exploits our

disappointments and vulnerabilities (p. 282). As corporations seek to

increase profits through work automation, speed-up, and exponential

increases in productivity, the prospect of robots replacing humans for home

care becomes ever more tantalizing.

Turkle believes that children, the ill, and the elderly need the fluidity

and variation of human vocal inflection and facial expression, and that for us

to provide care for them to is to make ourselves more fully human (p. 292). It

makes little sense to manufacture robotic companions, in Turkle's view,

when we could instead hire the unemployed to nurture children and care for

the elderly and, in the process, pay them more than the minimum wage.

Left unspoken by Turkle is that robots enable corporations to increase

profits and to further eliminate the jobs of the working poor.

In considering the possibilities of technology as an aid to memory,

Turkle describes a project in which Gordon Bell, a computer pioneer, sought

Unauthenticated

Download Date | 8/17/15 4:11 AM

Book Review

Social Change Review ▪ Summer 2015 ▪ Vol. 13(1): 79-81

81

to archive all his conversations and to digitize his visual memories. Turkle

wonders to what end was all this preserved and whether technology might

not end up displacing our own powers of remembrance (p. 300). As Jorge

Luis Borges reminds us: 'Having known Latin and forgotten it / remains a

possession; forgetting / is memory's dim cellar, one of its forms, / the other

secret face of the coin' (Borges 1974).

Turkle notes in passing how virtual simulation and video games

inculcate the callousness necessary for war. 'First we learn to kill the virtual,'

observes Turkle. 'Then desensitized we are sent to kill the real' (p. 47).

Although robots cannot make ethical decisions, the Pentagon is presently

developing humanoid robotic soldiers that will cut veteran pension and

health care costs but which will fail to make us feel safer. In contrast to this

prospect of even more technological mayhem, Turkle asks us to find sacred

spaces within and to affirm the primacy of human touch and love.

Other Works Cited:

Borges, Jorge Luis. 1974. In Praise of Darkness . New York: E. P. Dutton.

Healy, Michelle. 2007. "Young Adults Show More Self-Centeredness." USA

Today 9D, February 27.

Unauthenticated

Download Date | 8/17/15 4:11 AM

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.