Q&A: SHERRY TURKLE, author, Alone Tog Together: ether: Why We Expect More from Te Technology
and Less from Each Other By Terrence McNally (aworldthatjstm!ghtwor"#com$ %e&rary ') *+'' “This is a book of repentance,” Sherry Turkle Turkle has said of Alone of Alone To Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. “ I have been studying computers and people for thirty years. I didn’t see several important things. I got some important things wrong.” “Technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone. ut it also drains us as we try to do everything everywhere. everywhere. !In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude.” Sherry Turkle is "rofessor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at #IT and founder and director of the #IT Initiative on Technology Technology and Self. $ licensed clinical clinica l psychologist, psychologist , Sherry is the author of several books including The Second Self: Computers and the uman Sp!r!t, Sp!r!t, and L!fe on the Screen: Screen: "dent!ty !n the Age of the "nternet. "nternet . Alone To Together completes completes a trilogy. #c%ally& 'ou studied sociology and personality psychology. (ow is it that you began to focus on the relationships between humans and technology) Turkle& I took a *ob at #IT. #IT. +oming +oming out of (arvard trained as a clinician and a social scientist, #IT seemed a perfect place to look at some new kinds of ideas about the mind that were based on computation. #c%ally& hat year) Turkle& This was ’-, ’--. There had long been artificial intelligence and ideas about computers, but for the first time people had home computers or at work had e/periences with computers that made those ideas more compelling, more real. They were no longer abstract. "sychoanalytic ideas had at first been for e/perts, and then all of a sudden people analy0ed each other’s other’s dreams, psychoanalytic ideas helped you raise children1 you talked about them with your friends. (ow does something like that happen) I set out to study that same kind of movement of ideas about computers from seminar rooms into the popular culture. ut as I was studying this fairly academic problem, something dramatic happened. In my first couple of weeks at #IT, I noticed the intensity of people’s relationships with their computers. #c%ally& 'ou’d never seen that before) Turkle& %o. $t (arvard, I hadn’t seen people with computers. hen I wanted to run data, I had a friend who did that kind of thing. "eople used to go to the computer building to put in their
punch cards or whatever they did in the computer building. I never saw people in relationship to this technology, I saw people using it to do instrumental things. #c%ally& So it was partly the fact that you ventured into a place where folks were ahead of the curve) Turkle& 'es. These were people who were actually working with, in, and on these computers. The first generation of personal computers was starting to come out!computers that you could build from kits!the $ltair!the first generation of T2S34 home computers. hen I saw people with computers, it really hit me! #c%ally& 'ou mean how people were with computers) Turkle& "eople say, “5h, it’s *ust like your stereo or your car.” %o, I’d seen people with their cars and their stereos1 it was not like that. I think it’s because the computer is a mind machine. It doesn’t have its own psychology, but in a way it presents itself as though it does. I called my first book on this 6uestion, The Second Self . I took that name from a 78 year9old girl who had a little personal computer on which she programmed. She said, “hen you program a computer, you take a little piece of your mind and you put it in the computer’s mind, and you come to see it differently.” It was that mind9to9mind connection with the technology that fascinated me. #c%ally& In +ambridge in ’-8 or ’-:, I I made a friendship with someone who told me he was working in an #IT lab inputting digital information and creating images on the screen that had never e/isted as physical reality, not even as a drawing. That day I knew something really new was happening. as there a moment when you reali0ed this wasn’t something you were going to look at for a couple of years, but that it had become your life) Turkle& I wrote The Second Self from the day I hit #IT until it came out in 7;3:, and by that time, I had found my ne/t sub*ect. I’ve been very fortunate1 as technology has been developing, it has posed new challenges. #y sub*ect is not what computers do for us, but what computers do to us 99 to our sense of self1 to the ways we raise our children1 to how we see the world. I call it the sub*ective computer, and as the technology has evolved, it has posed that 6uestion in very different ways. Those first computers that my students were falling in love with and pro*ecting themselves onto and seeing as a second self! Those first computers were there as ob*ects to be programmed and pro*ected onto. In my first book I studied the pro*ection of self onto machine and the fascinating one9on9one connection of self and machine.
y 7;3< or ’3, you could already see people moving online into the new world of the Internet 99 then called the $rpanet 99 and I began to be fascinated by the issues of online connectivity. I was able to tell the story of the very early $5=, the chat rooms, the early #>?s and #55s, the multi9user domains that are the early versions of something like Second =ife and @irtual orld. L!fe on the Screen: "dent!ty !n the Age of the "nternet poses new 6uestions and psychological issues. hat kind of life do we have when we use the computer as a portal to a virtual life beyond it) To a life that we share with other people on the network beyond the screen) #c%ally& It helps that your degree was in sociology and psychology. Turkle& I’m blessed because it turns out that I was very well trained to study this phenomenon. I’m able to do what I call an intimate ethnography. II look at the social environment, but I also sit for many hours and do interviews to try to figure out the meaning. That second book was not about the one9on9one with the computer1 it was about the world that we shape with each other as we meet each other in the virtual places that we get to through the computer. 5ne of the things that fascinated me most in that book was the identity play that’s possible when people go online A whether in a game or a virtual world or in a website community A and play out aspects of themselves that aren’t fully reali0ed in their physical life. 'ou create an avatar, but you end up playing some aspect of yourself. #c%ally& That was 7;;< 99 prior to social media and online dating and all those things. hy do you consider Alone Together a book of repentance) Turkle& I went back and I read the book carefully, and there was something I didn’t see in 7;;<. I saw it a little bit but I didn’t focus on it. I didn’t see how things would change when you had your technology always on. I *oke to my students 99 I say call me “not prescient” B=$>C(SD. #y model of how this identity e/ploration would take place 99 because it’s the way it was happening at the time 99 was that people would have several windows open on their screen, and they would cycle through identities. I coined this term “cycling through.” That was fascinating to me, this notion of multiple identities and cycling through. They might be at work during the day and with their kids and so forth, and then at night they would spend often three or four or five hours in online worlds e/ploring different aspects of self. ut basically I saw a firewall of sorts. #c%ally& That when you weren’t at your computer you weren’t with your computer. Turkle& ell put. I’m e/aggerating slightly because I really was interested in the fluidity of that boundary psychologically, but essentially, that’s what I thought.
$fter I finished L!fe on the Screen, I had the profound e/perience of going back to #IT and meeting Steve #ann and rad Stormer, scientists who called themselves cyborgs. These young scientists wore their computers as backpacks, carried their keyboards in their pockets, wore their glasses as screens. They were essentially wearing the web on their backs. "eople were making fun of them at the time, saying they looked like disabled people, thinking that they had some kind of prosthetic. hen I saw them, I saw what I had missed& I saw the future. #c%ally& hen you say you saw the future, did you see how it would happen) hat made it work for the masses, and not *ust for the cutting edge eccentrics, was the reduction in si0e! Turkle& I knew! I didn’t know, but I knew. B=$>C(SD #c%ally& The book Alone Together has an introductory section that sets things up and then it splits into two sections. The first section is on sociable robotics, the second section is on the all9the9 time9all9connected world so many of us live in. I thought that was an interesting choice because I don’t think much about robotics. Turkle& Time to think. I also had an “aha” moment meeting +5C, my first sociable robot 99 a robot that engages you in a sociable interaction. These robots are not 99 #c%ally& 99 They’re not manufacturing a car. Turkle& They’re not manufacturing anything or cleaning the rug. These robots are there to be with you. In 7;;<, I was at a conference on artificial life with +hristopher =angton, a great figure in the history of artificial life. I include this anecdote in L!fe on the Screen. The book was done, and I remember really annoying everybody at the publishers, saying “I have to put this in.” e went together to 2odney rooks’ laboratory, and here’s this robot that looks you in the eye. It can recogni0e a face and can recogni0e eyes. It gestures in your direction and it tracks human motion. It can tell what’s human motion and what’s non9. (uman motion is irregular, non9human motion is very linear. It fi/es on you, usually because you’re wearing a color that it’s been programmed to be interested in, and it tracks on you. I became competitive with =angton about who +5C was paying more attention to. It turns out that when a robot gestures in your direction, makes eye contact, tracks your motion 99 you’re toast. 'ou believe that there’s someone home because the last thing that did that was another human being. So we’re very vulnerable to robots that do those things.
#c%ally& #irror neurons at play) Turkle& $bsolutely. #irror neurons would be relevant. #c%ally& hen I see you rub your arm, neurons fire in my brain as if I were rubbing mine. 5ur mirror neurons don’t know the robot doesn’t mirror back. Turkle& So if a robot is looking as though it cares, you feel! #c%ally& 99 the same thing you would if a person looked at you that way! Turkle& 'es. $ relationship forms. That’s a part of what makes you toast 99 you anticipate a relationship whereas in fact there’s no relationship. I decided to follow that story as well, and in my mind the two have turned out to be 6uite related. #c%ally& The social media, the te/ting, all that stuff is in my world. hat leads you to say it’s time to think about social robotics) Turkle& e didn’t think before we put mobile connectivity in our lives. e *ust said, “5h, phones that will interrupt us every few minutes) +oolE Te/ts that will be te/ting at funerals A whoaE” e put a seductive technology into the hands of eight9year9olds without giving it a thought. I’m e/aggerating of course. I apologi0e to all of my colleagues who’ve been writing up storms, but as a culture we’ve essentially put ourselves into a position where #ark Fuckerberg can say, “"rivacy as a social norm is no longer relevant,” and a lot of people don’t blink an eye. #c%ally& $nd the younger people are the more they seem to go along, because they’ve grown up with it. Turkle& hen the social network doesn’t find it convenient to have privacy, we say, “5kay, social network, you don’t want privacy, maybe we won’t have it either.” ut we did this without having the conversation. #c%ally& It was a step at a time. If it’s possible, let’s try it. If it’s possible and it sells, let’s try more of it. Turkle&
(aving traced this for over 7< years, I think it’s time to take a step back and say, “e’ve gotten ourselves into some places where we’re not serving our human purposes. =et’s reconsider.” I focused on the sociable robot first because it’s not *ust a technology of the future, it’s happening now. It’s very big in Gapan and there’s a sociable robot in every ?anish nursing home. It’s being aggressively marketed here now, and you’ll see more in the years to come. There’s already a discourse about why we need it. It’s not distant, but it’s not in your face yet. =et’s think first. (ere’s another seductive technology and here are some tools for thinking about it. #c%ally& 'ou referred to Gapan, Scandinavia. hat’s going on) Turkle& The premise is that the boomers are aging, and there aren’t enough of the ne/t demographic group coming in to take care of the elderly. Taking care of the old is very e/pensive, and robots can be brought in to do the *ob. =ike calling in the cavalry. They can be companions to the elderly, in addition to doing some very commonsense things like helping out with medicine and lifting them if they fall. I’m all for robots that help with anything instrumental or practical, but to pretend to be companions 99 #c%ally& ?esigned to pretend to be companions 99 by the look, the turn of the head, the body language! Turkle& 99 $nd by the voice. They have vocabularies and they increasingly pretend to understand. $n old woman e/plains the loss of a husband or the death of a child to an inanimate ob*ect that pretends to understand. $n inanimate ob*ect that doesn’t know what it is to have a husband or lose a child. $n elderly person talks about the regret of their divorce to an ob*ect that can have no understanding of human regret. I call these chapters “=ove’s =abors =ost.” #c%ally& The robot responds in ways that simulate understanding and empathy by responding to behavioral signals) Turkle& 'es. #c%ally& $s the elderly person moves her head a certain way, varies her tone of voice, her eyes do certain things, and it’s programmed to respond. Turkle& Hven as we speak, these robots are getting better. I e/perience incredible wonder at the ingenuity of my colleagues who are creating robots that pick up ever finer signals from the
humans they’re dealing with. $nd my 6uestion is, “hy would we want to do this)” I want to start that conversation. I think it’s time to have it. #c%ally& Though we may have seen #laderunner thirty years ago, we haven’t talked about these things very seriously. Turkle& I think it’s good when somebody knows the best rebuttal to their argument. The best response to my concern is that we have relationships with many different things, creatures and beings. e have relationships with cats, with dogs, with horses, and we know that there are certain things they can’t do. So we’ll add robots to that list, and we’ll learn what they can and cannot do. %o harm, no foul. #c%ally& There’s been a movement over the last ten years or so promoting pets for the elderly and the disabled!2obots *ust give us a wider repertoire. Turkle& That’s essentially their response& this is *ust a wider repertoire, but I think the research I report on in Alone Together undermines that. e are vulnerable to these ob*ects and we need to take that into account. Gust as we’re vulnerable to our cellphones in a way that we need to take into account. I interview many mothers A hundreds 99 who talk about driving on the highway 99 at < if they think they’re going the speed limit, sometimes at 34 miles an hour if they admit to driving too fast 99 with a lackberry on the seat beside them. The little red light goes off, and they te/t or answer an email 99 while their kid’s in the car. $re these mothers happy that they’re endangering their children’s lives) %o, but they are vulnerable to doing something they know is not really in their best interest. $s a therapist, I know that when you’re vulnerable, the best way to move on is to admit your vulnerability, don’t beat yourself up for it, and try to find a way to analy0e your vulnerability. "ull up your socks and try to do better for you and your family. Similarly with the robots. I’ve done study after study where you e/plain that this is a robot, you e/plain that this robot doesn’t understand what you’re saying. $s a matter of fact, in the study I did with +ynthia ra0il and rian Scatolati, two colleagues at #IT who developed very sophisticated sociable robots, we un9roboti0e the robot. It’s like taking "inocchio and making him turn back into a puppet after being a real boy. e took out all the artificial intelligence to show children that it really was *ust a program. Then we reprogrammed it to make the point that it was only a robot. ut the minute that robot looks you in the eye, does the gesture of affection! #c%ally& 99 seems interested, seems to care! Turkle& 99 e are enchanted once again. I begin the book with an inscription from "lato A “Hverything that deceives may be said to enchant.” 5r maybe it’s the other way. hat I love about that
6uote is that I always forget! It also works the other way& “Hverything that enchants may be said to deceive.” B=$>C(SD To people who say, “hat’s the harm) e’ll remind them it’s only a robot, it doesn’t really understand.” I say we’re more vulnerable than that. That’s like saying, “?on’t te/t on the highway. It’s really not a good idea.” It doesn’t take seriously our vulnerability. This book is about taking our vulnerability seriously. The theme to Alone Together is human vulnerability. In the area of robotics and in the area of connectivity, technology is offering us things that we are vulnerable to 99 and we have to have a better response than a shrug. #c%ally& $s I was listening to you talk about the mother te/ting while speeding, I thought, “She’s like a machine, she can’t resist.” $nd then I reali0ed, wait, no, she’s the human in the e6uation. e want to think we are the humans, we’re in charge. 'et we wouldn’t be nearly so vulnerable if we were more fully in charge. Turkle& e talk to people about why they respond. It turns out to be terribly complicated in ways that give me some reason to hope. or e/ample, people talk about their phone as the place where new things come to them. That’s where an author look for $ma0on numbers to see how well a book is doing. Hverybody is waiting for a message from someone they love or care about! #c%ally& ! I’m going through my day and it’s boring. Turkle& Something new will come, someone you care about will be in touch, or that invitation that will make ne/t week light up, or that friend you lost track of, or that article that sparks something. It reminds me of the families in Gane $usten who would listen for the post, maybe an invitation from #r. ingley and a ball, hoping for the social invitation that would change their lives. #c%ally& 5f course, in that era, you would e/pect it once a week or once a month, and now it’s 99 Turkle& 99 instantly. It also reminds me of The M!ll!ona!re, that show where Gay eresford Tipton would come and hand you a check for a million dollars, or Hd #c#ahon and the "ublisher’s +learing (ouse. Something that will change things. I think that our profound connection to these phones is because they have become the place we look to for that. #c%ally&
'ou mean the Smart phone, where you not only get the call, the te/t, but it’s where you learn if your stock went up or your ball team won. Turkle& It’s all there. 5r it’s your email. or some people, when that thing pings, they’re gone. 'ou’re in a conversation with somebody in their office, and there’s a ping on their email. =iterally they turn 99 they don’t say “e/cuse me” any more 99 they’re gone. There’s a lot of research that indicates the brain rewards us for multi9tasking by giving us a shot of neurochemicals whenever we start a new task. 5ur brain rewards us even as our performance in every task degrades. e don’t even notice that our performance is bad. e don’t care. e feel like masters of the universe because our brain is chemically rewarding us for multi9tasking. ut everybody who’s ever had to finish a pro*ect, a book, a painting 99 when the crunch comes, you have to turn it all off. BTH22H%+H’S i"(5%H C5HS 5D 99 hat *ust happened between us is the story of our lives now. The difference is that you got beet red in the face and flustered and embarrassed. In regular life at dinner people say “H/cuse me,” and answer it. #c%ally& BlaughsD I wish I were that clever, that I had planned it to go off! Turkle& 5ne of the arguments I make in Alone Together is that we’re too busy communicating to think, too busy communicating to connect, and sometimes we’re too busy communicating to create. This is true for individuals and also true for organi0ations. hat’s with that) #c%ally& I want to ask you about two people who write about this& 2ay Jur0weil and Jevin Jelly. Jur0weil’s books include The Age of "ntell!gent Mach!nes$ The Age of Sp!r!tual Mach!nes and The S!ngular!ty !s %ear . Jelly’s new book is What Technology Wants. Turkle& ell, both of these men’s work is of tremendous interest to me. The Singularity, for people who might not know, is that moment where artificial intelligence becomes so smart that all of our assumptions about intelligence and mind go totally out the window because $I can now do things and make things and be things and give us things that we cannot even imagine. In Alone Together , I call it the “technological rapture,” where all assumptions change, where all bets are off. 2ay thinks that at that moment we will be able to live forever because we will become one with the machine. #c%ally&
#aybe this corporal body will die, but Jur0weil believes by then all your information will have been downloaded into something else that doesn’t die. Turkle& e will continue to live in a form in which we become cyborg. Hither we download our information to a machine or we incorporate so many machine parts that we don’t know where we end and the machine begins. In his way of thinking, the issue of us and them disappears. (e anticipates that there are some people who won’t want to do that, and they’ll be 99 I don’t want to say “pets,” but he has some metaphor for those few people who won’t want to live forever. I think he calls them “naturals” or something. #c%ally& It’s derogatory!they’re a bit pathetic. Turkle& hy wouldn’t they want to) ?on’t forget you become a lot smarter after you do this downloading. 'ou get to be enhanced. 'ou’re not *ust downloading your little bit of intellectual e6uipment, you have all of the brilliance of the machine. #c%ally& 'ou download the version of you that you want. Turkle& H/actly. It’s a kind of trans9human future. I have to say that I’m very species chauvinistic. I’m limiting myself to the human beings who are born, who have the arc of the human life cycle, and who die. hat are our responsibilities to each other as we continue to e/ist in this form) In that sense, I think that 2ay and I operate with a different set of morals and values. Jevin Jelly is a bit of a different story. e operate in a little more of a parallel, on the same plane. Jevin’s new book is What Technology Wants. I have deep respect for him as a truly innovative thinker and writer, but I really don’t care what technology wants. I care about what people want and what’s good for people. (e and I share the belief in a kind of co9evolution. I begin my book by saying that technology is the architect of all intimacies. I love the inston +hurchill 6uote, “e make our buildings, and then our buildings make and shape us.” e’re in partnership with technology, influencing each other in a dance. #y loyalties are to our making and shaping technology to conform to our human values1 and to confronting the hard *ob of figuring out what those values are, and how are we’re going to get technology to do that. #c%ally& ut you say let’s be cogni0ant of the fact that we react as if it wants something. 'ou don’t say we can ignore it. Turkle& %ow it looks like robots want to love us. In what way do I need to take that into account)
#c%ally& 'ou’ve said that you need to take it into account to the degree that our vulnerabilities make us susceptible. hen they were *ust programmable keyboards and screens, we were less vulnerable. Turkle& 2obots want to love us because the field of artificial intelligence has programmed robots to say they want to love us. #c%ally& %ow let’s talk about the second half of the book, about our technological connectedness. 'ou say, “Teenagers avoid making phone calls. They’re fearful that they will reveal too much.” This is not *ust your con*ecture. 'ou do a lot of thinking, but you also do a lot of interviews. Turkle& I try to do the interviews before I think. #c%ally& 'ou write& “Teenagers would rather te/t than talk,” and “If we don’t teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.” 'ou talk about something called “the nostalgia of the young”. %ostalgia for a time that may have never e/isted. 5ne of your biggest findings and I think it surprised you& it’s not *ust the kids who te/t while they drive and who don’t look at you when they’re talking to you. They’re learning this from their parents as much as the other way around. Turkle& hen I do 6ualitative research, I have two methodological rules. The first is, I don’t tell a story unless I have a very deep bench. If you tell an idiosyncratic story, there’s no resonance. "eople read it and say, “I don’t see anyone like that.” So I tell a story only when I have many stories behind it. I e/pected to tell a story about teenagers driving their parents cra0y with te/ting. Instead I found a story of parents te/ting while driving, te/ting during dinner, te/ting with one hand while reading (arry "otter with the other. #c%ally& The one that struck me is when they’re at the park with a young child. Turkle& 99 and te/ting the virtual mistress. #c%ally& (ow can a child show off) Turkle& The child on the *ungle gym is looking over at his father, who is te/ting.
#any young men talked about Sunday football. ?uring the commercials or in between plays used to be the time when dad would talk to me. That’s when I felt comfortable sharing confidences. #c%ally& They’re sitting there together doing something that isn’t intimate, so that allows for intimacy. Turkle& ut now ?ad’s on the laptop or the phone. #c%ally& 5r else he *ust Ti@o’s through the commercials and that time is gone. Turkle& 5r even between plays. I think parents need to accept our vulnerability and set some rules about what it is to be in a family. I’m optimistic because, in my interviews, the parents who admit to these behaviors are not happy about them. hen we’re not happy about something and we’re vulnerable to it, we can do better. #c%ally& 'ou recommend that we not say we’re addicted to this stuff. Turkle& hen you’re addicted to heroin, there is only one thing you can do 99 go off heroin. ut we’re not going to throw away these phones, we’re not going to throw away our technology. #c%ally& So it creates a false choice that leaves me no choice but to keep doing what I’m doing. Turkle& It makes people feel impotent and hopeless. It’s better to say you’re vulnerable, then face the vulnerability and go back to your values. 5n the 6uestion of teaching your children how to be alone!The kind of solitude that refreshes and restores is very important, not *ust for children, not *ust for adolescents, but for all of us. If you don’t teach your children how to be alone they will only be able to be lonely. #c%ally& 'ou’re saying that K:L- connection does two things& one, it cheapens connection1 and two, it avoids solitude. Turkle& It doesn’t allow you solitude that’s restorative, it leaves you lonely. Jids have moved from, “I have a feeling, I want to make a call,” to “I’d like to have a feeling, I need to send a te/t.” In other words, there’s a continual need for validation. They’re constituting a thought or feeling by sending it out for votes. That’s really not where you want to be emotionally.
Telephone companies sell us voice plans because they know we’re not going to use them. e’re hiding from each other. "eople say that calls aren’t efficient, but trying to bring efficiency into your intimacy can get you into a lot of trouble. #c%ally& 'our headline is that people need to strike a balance, and many of us are not as good at this as we think we are. 'our final words on this) Turkle& If you’re happy with where the Internet, acebook, and Twitter have taken you, I’m not the Crinch. Someone called me Sherry Turkle’s “evil =uddite twin.” I’m not that. I en*oy the bounties of this technology. ut if you fear that your connected life is running away with you, read the book, reflect, talk to your family and friends. I think we deserve better than some of the places that we’ve gotten with this technology.
