About the Book

 


Alone Together was published in 2011 and has had many different reviews. On one hand, many people feel enlightened by the points she raises in the book and agrees with them. However, others also critique her research methods. Below are all the reviews I came across, along with excerpts from the reviews that help demonstrate the reviewer's opinion.

New York Times:
"I certainly don’t expect Turkle to have all the answers, but her ethnographic portraits would have benefited from a more probing investigation of such questions. The teenagers she quotes complain about everything — phones, texting, e-mail, Skype. And yet, virtually none of them seem willing to turn off the digital spigot."

Bloomberg Businessweek:
"Yet this genre and its cyber-analysts owe a debt of gratitude to Turkle, the category's godmother. Technology has changed drastically in the past quarter century in which Turkle has been working, yet her thesis appears truer than ever."

The Guardian:
"Turkle is a psychoanalyst by training and her instinct is to describe unfamiliar social habits as pathologies. She tends to revel in the more neurotic cases among her subjects and to gloss over happier experiences of technology, although she rarely lets clinical jargon infect her prose. The focus on psychology also neglects wider social and economic forces...But that does not invalidate the diagnosis."

Slashdot:
"In her compelling new book Alone Together, Turkle says our online lives, which barely existed when she wrote Life on the Screen in 1995, have become all-too-comfortable substitutes for direct human interaction." 


Judging by these reviews, you can see that reader's reactions are very split. This continues to be true in ratings by online users. On Amazon, the book received 4.1/5 stars; on GoodReads, it received 3.55/5 stars; and on Google Books it received 3.5/5. 

While the reviews may be scattered, Sherry Turkle provides credible points in her book and is eye-opening to any reader. The book may be purchased on Amazon in both print and e-book form.