Sherry Turkles Alone Together

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Book Review

Alone Together is a book that was written in 2011 exploring the sociological and technological aspects that have become part of human lives. The author of this book Sherry Turkle has also written other books that explore the relationship between human beings and computers in a modern-world setting. Turkles body of work includes a trilogy of books that explore this subject.

Alone Together is not a mere rhetoric on the subject of human beings and computers but it also delves deeper into this subject. Turkles book is able to provide readers with both an internal and an external analysis of the ways in which new technology has changed basic human interaction. Alone Together is very resourceful to both those who agree with the author and those who do not agree with her.

The author of this book has over three years of experience when it comes to cataloguing the complicated relationship between man and computer. Prior to Alone Together, Turkle had written two other books on the same subject.

This particular book seeks to examine the activities of human beings in both virtual and real spaces. This mode of examination is in line with the assumption that human beings today exist in a largely technological platform. In Turkles words, it is important for us to know how we got to this place and whether we are content to be here (Turkle 121).

This book is guided by the authors psychoanalytic perspective. The author is a trained psychologist and she employs her vocation in her analysis of the relationship between the inanimate computers and human beings. The skills employed by the author are sufficient enough to formulate a coherent and substantial argument.

The author is not only a trained psychologist but she also has worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a faculty member for over thirty years. Her tenure at the MIT has provided her with valuable insight into computer culture.

The authors background provides her with the necessary authority on her subject of choice. The author is also able to maintain the necessary balance between technological and psychological aspects of her case study.

The book begins by cataloguing The Robotic Movement. According to the author, modern children have unusual companionships with their robots. The author claims that children have love-filled relationships with their robots. This claim might seem outrageous to most people. However, the author substantiates her claim by giving examples of various children-robot relationships.

For instance, the author gives an example of the genuine sadness that children display when their Tomagotchis die. The book also gives a vivid description of human beings habits when they are playing the computer game Second Life. The author is able to prove that people display similar emotions to their virtual companions as they do to real ones.

While the notion of human beings showing emotions to robots is outrageous at first, the author is able to give solid examples that prove her line of thinking. The book is able to offer prove that indeed human beings are beginning to treat digital objects as if they are both machines and creatures. The author is also able to predict that this development is bound to make human beings more vulnerable.

The methods employed by the author as part of her research are not only practical but they also provide a fascinating insight into the world of robot technology. In one instance, the book lists an incident in which Turkle was investigating how robots are being used as a remedy for loneliness.

This research takes her into a home for the elderly where robots have replaced human beings as sources of companionship. Among the interesting aspects of this particular study, is that the robots in the nursing home were initially meant to cure loneliness among the elderly people who were living in the nursing home.

In addition, the robots were also supposed to assuage the regrets of those who had broken ties with their families (Turkle 124). However, the author wonders how suppressing ones conscience amounts to a solution. Human beings are kept on a moral path by their conscience and suppressing that conscience is not a solution.

Most religions and moral codes that are taught around the world stand vehemently against moral complacency. According to Turkle, what the Japanese scientists are calling a solution might indeed be a problem. Another interesting observation that was made by the author in the course of this research is the irony of these healthcare robots.

The healthcare robots project was initially meant to heal our wounds and pull us back towards the physical real and thus each other (Turkle 146). However, the robots achieve this connection by decreasing the rate of human interaction. The irony of the healthcare robots is one of the highlights of Turkles book.

It makes the concept of human beings trying to alienate their loneliness through robots seem circular in nature.

According to the author, the over-dependence on robots is bound to cause problems eventually. The reason she gives for her conviction is that robots are styled to capitalize on human instincts. The book offers several examples of the gullibility of human instincts. One example is when children play with the robotic pet Tomagotchi.

It takes a very short time for children to express humanistic interests towards the inanimate Tomagotchis. The author reckons that even adults tend to show sympathy towards robots. This assertion may be true considering the amount of resources that are usually put towards developing robots. It shows that there is a hunger for supplementary human connection.

For example, the author gives an example of a pricy sex doll that costs more than three thousand dollars. Considering that the cost of actual human connection would be much less than the three thousand dollars, it is easy to see things from the authors perspective.

Human beings are desperate to substitute human interactions for robotic attachments. This unhealthy attachment is bound to cause problems because eventually the human-to-human connection might seem untenable.

Most of the claims made in Alone Together are one-sided. The author does not delve into the opposing sides argument but instead stays in her path against human-technological attachments. While there are thousands of stories about the failures of human-technological attachments, there are tens of thousands of stories about the successes of these attachments.

There is a school of thought that argues that humans turn to technology to compliment their existing social relationships and not to substitute them. This pokes holes into Turkles one-sided hypothesis that human beings turn to technology as an alternative to human connections.

For instance, a study that was conducted to gauge the impact of online social networking on human beings revealed that it improves psychological health. In addition, interactions on the internet were found to improve the self-esteem of individuals suffering from low self-esteem.

Another study that was conducted at Michigan State University revealed that the individuals who regularly used Facebook had more social capital than the individuals who were not Facebook users. All these studies show that the authors claims might be exaggerated to some point and they are not necessarily accurate.

While the book provides a lot of new insight into how humans relate to technology, it does not provide any new concerns to its readers. For instance, from the time the internet was invented, several office workers have had to contend with extended working hours.

Therefore, the book only provides new aspects of a problem that has been in existence for a few decades now. However, the intensity of the authors research is able to overshadow this shortcoming and deliver a convincing argument. For example, the interviews with children are a fresh input to books that explore impacts of technology on humans.

Sherry Turkles book has a broad target-audience that includes communication scholars, sociologists, psychologists, and researchers. Apart from this target audience, the book can also provide an interesting perspective to anyone who might be interested in understanding the nature of human beings.

The author has bestowed appropriate and relevant bibliographical notes upon her readers throughout the book. Alone Together purposefully offers a one sided argument on the dangers of human-technological interaction.

The author chose to dwell on the negative aspects of this interaction in order to persuade readers to notice what the quest for connectedness can yield. The research used in making this book is impressive to both scholars and other curious readers. Overall, the book provides a rich source of new information pertaining to human-technological connectivity.

Works Cited

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011. Print.

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Sherry Turkles Alone Together

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