Bookworm: Alone Together

Sherry Turkle explores the lure of tech and why it’s making us lonely.

What’s the book’s main premise?

Technology has transformed our lives. But while it promises to bring us together, it can actually make us feel more alone.

In Alone Together, Sherry Turkle – a trained psychoanalyst, author and professor at MIT – asks whether we, as humans, are able to transform the way we communicate without altering, at some level, what it means to be human. She explores what we might be losing as well as gaining in a world of electronic and virtual companionship.

Why do we choose tech over human interaction?

People are messy and unreliable in a ways that simulations of life, and life mediated through the screens of our smartphones, is not.

For example, the avatars or simulations we create in blogs, games, and chatrooms allow us to be who we want to be. But while it can be good to experiment with our identity, Turkle raises a red flag for younger people, many of whom are wary (or downright fearful) of simply ‘being themselves’ online.

Instead, they spend time honing text messages to create the illusion of spontaneity and invest their energy in curating social media posts that suggest a ‘cooler’ and more enviable life. However, what looks good often feels bad as maintaining the illusion is incredibly stressful.

Can you give an example of technology’s hold on us?

In her book, Turkle cites the example of a psychological experiment involving a live gerbil, a Barbie doll, and a Furby robotic toy, programmed to respond to human attention.

Participants were asked to hold these items upside down, one after the other. Faced with the prospect of a writhing gerbil, they shrugged off this part of the task but had no problem at all inverting the non-sentient Barbie. The most interesting outcome relates to the Furby, which  when inverted issued the cry “me scared” in a convincingly child-like voice.

Of course, the participants knew that the Furby had no more feelings than the Barbie, but the simulation was enough to provoke their empathy. In fact, after just 30 seconds, most felt compelled to turn it right side up.

This response shows just how good we are at applying human traits to inanimate objects and potentially, how willing we will be to accept machines as companions, carers, and even lovers. And not only accept them but grow to prefer them.

What are the dangers?

Turkle draws on her own research to show how more sophisticated robots can provoke deep emotional connections.

Tellingly, she observes that the difference between humans playing with a doll and playing with a robot is the same as between pretence and belief. We even compensate for the robot’s failings by ‘filling the gaps ‘with imagined feelings, just as we believed our Tamagotchi loved us back. This is significant as AI experts no longer need to focus on making computers as clever as people. A machine just needs the capacity to act clever and we will play along.

Where this becomes problematic lies to some degree in the eye of the beholder. If a person or a robot is performing the same care-giving tasks, does it matter that the robot doesn’t actually care? If a person actually prefers their robot to a family member does it really matter? And should we draw the line at robot ‘pets’, at mechanical nurses, or at recreational sex robots?

All of these ‘advances’ have complex implications for human relationships, ethics, and the law – and we ignore their impact at our peril.

What lessons can I take from this?

We believe technology will give us control and instead we can end up being controlled by it, answering work emails, in bed, at 11.00pm or playing addictive games on our smartphones while our children compete for our attention.

Add the growing rift between analogue and digital generations, the ability to relay personal triumphs and humiliations straight to the web, and the ease with which we can ‘unfriend’, ghost, or cancel others, and there is even more reason to guard against the divisiveness bound up in our devices.

In short, we should consider giving more attention to real relationships than to virtual ones.

What am I most likely to say after reading this book?

 “Fancy meeting for a coffee?”

What am I least likely to say after reading this book?

 “I shape my tools, they don’t shape me.”