Part Two

Part Two: Networked

The second part of Alone Together delves into concepts that modern times are more familiar with. Turkle talks about people are becoming glued to their mobile devices and we must be connected at every moment. 

The following NPR radio story with Sherry Turkle discusses many of her ideas:

She used both field research and clinical studies. In her field research, she observed people while they are in the their natural environment and observed their relationship with technology. Due to Turkle being a psychologist, the focus of her studies was the relationships that humans have with technology, rather than the technology itself, which helped strengthen her argument. In her clinical studies, she pursued more “detailed interviews” in order to complete research. 

An example from her research is an interview she had with a woman named Ellen. Ellen was living in Paris to pursue a job. Once a week, she would Skype with her grandmother to keep in touch. However, she noticed that while she was Skype-ing, she would also check e-mail. This parallels with the idea expressed in the article May I have your attention? by S. Craig Watkins. One of the concepts discussed in this article is “continuous partial attention”, the idea that, due to technology, our attention is always being turned to different things because it is readily available. This helps explain Ellen’s dilemma while online, and Turkle provides many more examples that exemplify continuous partial attention.

A big question about technology is if it is bringing us closer together, or farther apart. Turkle addresses this in her idea of being “alone together”. She notes the first time she realized this. She was at a conference on robotic technology, and while someone was giving a presentation, the majority of the audience was attending to their laptops, doing things not related to the presentation. Together, they were all online, but they were all attending to different things, therefore making them alone. While the term ‘alone together’ is ironic, Turkle explains it in ways that make sense, and proves that it is indeed true.

The idea that we are connected--or even, fairly enough, addicted--to technology is something that is already established and is not what Turkle tries to argue in this book. Rather, through her research, she tries to identify why we are so tethered to our devices from her psychological standpoint. Technology has the ability to assist us in many things, and has transformed our society. But it has now reached a point where it is slowly deteriorating human relationships, and Turkle has realized that.

She poses many ideas that are not exactly obvious, but they are certainly true in reflection. Turkle believes that we use our mobile devices to help disconnect us from our emotions that we may be feeling. A common example of this, that all of us have encountered at some point, is an awkward moment. You come across a person you do not know very well, or are involved in a conversation that you cannot provide much input, so the first thing many of us do is turn to our phones, and are taken away to the technological world. This illustrates another idea brought up in the article May I have your attention? called fast entertainment, which says that technology is fulfilling people’s desire for entertainment wherever and whenever. Our phones provide a comfortable feeling, because it is personalized to our liking.

Furthermore, our mobile devices also allow us to have control over both content and attention. We are becoming comfortable with the ability to control what we turn our attention to, and edit what we say. In real life, we do not have these abilities, but technology has given them to us. We are becoming too used to it, and it is drawing us away from being able to handle situations in which that is not the case. Lastly, technology is giving us the illusion that we never have to be alone. Therefore, when we are alone, we turn to technology, but the question is what will happen when we are alone without technology. We are becoming afraid of solitude, when we should not be. 

People are starting to realize this, and in the following video, Louis CK puts a lot of this ideas in a comedic light. He talks about how we use our phones to pull us away from feeling lonely, and feeling emotions.