Sherry Turkle’s new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, shines a bright and disturbing light on how our dependence upon our various personal technologies is shaping, limiting, and eviscerating the depth and nuance of our personal interactions. Technology allows us to present and share only those aspects of ourselves we choose to present. Direct conversation with others, on the other hand, challenges us to be present to others and to ourselves, with all our imperfections and awkward moments. Conversation with another helps us learn to listen to the other person and teaches and reinforces our own sense of empathy. Conversation with ourselves enhances our ability to pay attention to and recognize what we are feeling and thinking.
Technology surely has many benefits, but to funnel our relationships exclusively through technology truncates the reality and untidiness of what it is to be a person trying to understand another person or just ourselves. “Conversation” via technology enables us to stay fragmented (showing only the “good parts” of ourselves) and separated from ourselves and from the other person.
Highly recommended.
Technology surely has many benefits, but to funnel our relationships exclusively through technology truncates the reality and untidiness of what it is to be a person trying to understand another person or just ourselves. “Conversation” via technology enables us to stay fragmented (showing only the “good parts” of ourselves) and separated from ourselves and from the other person.
Highly recommended.
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