Though I agree with Turkle's basic thesis, the tone is repetitive, tedious, and, at points, ham-fisted. This book probably could have been greatly condensed, and I think that the first half of the book, the bit concerning robots, could very nearly be a separate work entirely. As I said, I think her ideas are important, and I think we should explore the potential damage that we are doing through our commitment to constant connectivity, but I also think that this could have been a more enjoyable (and concise) book. ( )

It's good. But I could've done without the first part on robots. The second part on texting, social media, and other aspects of how technology creeps into our life is better. And I think she could've expanded on the final chapter, which includes some great discussions on solutions.

I'd highly recommend watching her half hour long interview with Bill Moyers if you're looking for the basic points of the book:

https://vimeo.com/77192952 ( )

2.5 stars. This is a very dry book; it rambles a lot and is repetitive. I am reading it for a book club, and I think it will initiate a good discussion in spite of its faults. This book was written in 2011, so it suffers from being outdated. Is it worth a read? Not particularly. ( )

This book should get 10 stars! Informative and educational book about how technology has affected our lives and the way we now communicate...how texting is less intrusive than a phone call, and how parents ignore their children at the dinner table to check their email. Stories about people secretly texting at a funeral, because they can't "just sit there".
Scary, and absolutely true. If you have a phone, a computer or a facebook profile....this is a MUST READ. ( )

A comprehensive book on the effects of technology on our lives. The chapters about robots are probably too long and the relationship between interviews and theoretical considerations is sometimes not well balanced. Nevertheless, a pretty good read. ( )

This is an extremely interesting book for those out there who may feel that the society as we know it has gotten less, well, social and more self-centered than ever before: There is a great sense of the ME and not much of a feeling for the WE. The first part of Turkle's book explores the role of robots as caregivers or care-takers, as it were (think tamagotchi, virtual pets and the like). I found it fascinating, but it is not really the center of the book. The true (and scary) reason for reading the book is Part II, which describes the effects of hours of internet use (including some people who mix on-line life with real life in something called a life-mix), cell phones and the rest on our very human psyche which was not designed for such things. The author focuses to a great extent on teens and, in an ideal world, teens and their parents could read the book and have a compelling discussion. ( )

Heavy on the experiences(Like Jean Twenge). I feel like it could have been shorter. But so much good information and observations. And it's only gotten intensely worse. ( )

Highly recommended.

This is an academically-oriented book - written with laypeople in mind - about man's growing relationship with technology. It chronicles from the early days of novelty to the current days of dependency. A fascinating - and revealing book - it's been a while since I felt so unravelled after reading. My worldview with regard to technology has been challenged for the better. ( )

I picked up this audiobook from the library because the title revived me of the situation we are going through now being sober together with quarantine and 'Rona. W hike I knew this want coordinating with the current situation, but with technology. However it was very different than I expected, mainly because i misread the sub title "We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other" as I thought it was about why WE SHOULD expect more from technology and less from each other. So while I was expecting an uplifting tale about how things aren't that bad and technology is already saving us. Instead I get a boomertastic Tome about how awful reddit is. "Oh my gorsh! The Japs are f'n robots! Oh my gorsh everyone has a BlackBerry! Ohhhhh no body writes let's anymore!

She starts out with an introduction saying that she's not talking about robots but the internet, then goes on for half the book to talk about robots. It's so different especially when I just finished "I, robot" a week a go.

The most interesting part b was being revived of how much social media has changed in the 10 years since this book was when. The Facebook she speaks of is almost unrecognizable compared with the 2020 incarnation. Oh and don't forget "oh my gorsh! I just made a MySpace page, why didn't need Facebook?"

Now it's just for old people

How someone has made a career studying the interaction between man and technology and hates tech so much, I have n no clue.

Practically no redeeming qualities at all. ( )

I've been feeling a becoming-less-vague dislike of social media and portable connectivity for a while now, but had chalked those up to Luddite impulses that I should get over. This book has made me reevaluate whether those feelings are actually good. Things like my partner being on his phone constantly during meals (I feel lonely), browsing aimlessly through Facebook and feeling more and more insecure about the image I get of other people's lives compared to my own, and wishing I kept in touch with more people by phone and letters. These are all normal results of having the illusion of closer connections to people, when really they are elsewhere or only sharing an inauthentic version of themselves to the masses, rather than just me.

It makes me want to quit FB. I'm not going to do that (curiosity about people who are only there in my life), but I've started only logging on to check notifications and then getting out. I think it's better for my brain. I've never got into Twitter and couldn't come up with a really good justification for why not; I'm just not interested. Now I realize that it's because while it would connect me to a lot of people, those would all be superficial connections to people who didn't actually care about me, might not be there tomorrow, and of whom I couldn't expect a whole lot. I don't want 1000 followers; I want 10 friends that I talk to and see regularly.

This book also made me think a lot about parenting, and how I hope my kid(s) don't grow up with the assumption that they have no privacy and no space to themselves without other people expecting them to respond. Good lord; ten years ago I could spend a whole day out and about and only have pay phones to use! I don't want to be always on, always available. I don't want to be the parent that bans cell phones, and I also don't want to spend their adolescence constantly arguing about how I resist things that everyone else already does. It's too much for one person to fight. Step one, though, I'm getting from Turkle, would be to put away *my* phone and computer, and just pay attention to them. Duh. They'll learn manners by watching me. (Duh!) ( )

Part 1 describes experiments by the author and others showing the contradictory feelings we have toward robots that mimic human interaction.
1. People quickly bond with the robots and tell them things they would not tell another person.
2. They are concerned about the lack interaction with real humans.
Part 2 gets into an exploration of human emotion.

There is a lot is this book that is still relevant. I have not attempted to make a complete summary, only noted a few things that especially caught my attention.

The field is changing rapidly, and we might not be able to change the direction society is going. [a:Joseph Weizenbaum|496834|Joseph Weizenbaum|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1354656881p2/496834.jpg] raised concerns, in his book [b:Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation|986428|Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgment to Calculation|Joseph Weizenbaum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387751904l/986428._SY75_.jpg|971922], 1976. Meeting him in person I found him to be much less rabid that I expected. Some of the things he was concerned about have happened, and we hardly blinked. It all came on us gradually and we accepted the loss of privacy with hardly a whimper.

Late in life I worked with a beautiful young woman who announced that she was getting off Facebook. She has done that so many times in the last few years that I don’t bother to count. I couldn’t count even if I wanted to, for I am seldom on there. She is of that generation easily trapped into the allure of “social media”. But, it's not just young people who get trapped into the constant on of social media.

In the middle of the book Adam and his various in person and online gaming stages are described. His life and job are disintegrating, but he is doing nothing to prepare. This book does not concentrate on addiction. It is more concerned about are we really willing to give up personal human interaction?

“In fiction and in myth, human beings imagine themselves “playing God” and creating new forms of life. Now, in the real, sociable robots suggest a new dynamic. We have created something that we related to as an “other,” an equal, not something over which we wield godlike power. ... Because we reach for mutuality, we want them to care about us as we care for them. They can hurt us.” (Page 100 of 360)

“But people are capable of the higher standard of care that comes with empathy.” (Page 107)

“My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy — about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude — the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude. To experience solitude you must be able to summon yourself by yourself; otherwise, you will only know how to be lonely.” (Page 288) ( )

When I was giving birth to my daughter, the OB kept trying to talk me into a Caesarean. He always stood on the side of the bed closest to the door. If I was lying with my back to the door, he spoke to my rear-end. Even when he happened to be facing me he always stood, forcing me to look up at him as he spoke.

Every time he suggested surgery, I confirmed with him that there was no medical need for it, and continued to refuse the surgery. During one of my refusals, the nurse had sat near the wall doing paperwork. After the doctor left, she pulled up a chair, sat down, and looked me in the eye.

"I avoided an unnecessary C-section," she said. "If you're going to do this, you're going to have to be strong." I started crying.

"Why are you crying?" she asked.

"Because you're the first person to treat me like I was really here," I said.

Several years ago, I read about a new invention that would monitor contraction duration, strength and frequency; mother's heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure; and baby's heart rate. A nurse could keep track of many patients at once from the nurses' station, reducing the need to go into patients' rooms and helping deal with the nursing shortage.

On the surface, it kind of seems like it makes sense. There are too few nurses to attend to all of the patients, so let's fill the void with technology. The assumption is that the choice is between what's essentially robotic care and no care. When seen this way, it makes sense to go with technology. This, however, diminishes the role of the nurse to that of a machine, and it reduces the birthing woman to an object to be monitored, a problem to be addressed. This solution ignores the human role in caring for other humans as well as the patient's humanity (which often gets lost in the U.S. medical system anyway).

Humans do make mistakes. It was a human doctor who was pushing for a surgery that was not medically indicated. Had I been monitored by machines, maybe the issue of a surgical birth wouldn't even have come up. But it's not the doctor that these inventions would take out of the equation. If that nurse hadn't been in my room to care for me, if she had been monitoring me remotely via machines to which I was attached, would I have ended up with unnecessary surgery? Maybe. But even if I'd ended up with a surgical birth (which I didn't, incidentally), the personal care that nurse gave me could not have been replaced by a machine. She was the only person at that hospital up to that point who made me feel like I was seen as a human being rather than just a meat sack with a baby inside. Even almost thirteen years later, I still start crying at the memory of her sitting next to me, speaking quietly but firmly while looking me in the eye, showing me that she was there for me, not just as a medical professional, but as a fellow human being.

This is the crux of the argument Turkle makes in this book. Technology provides us with some phenomenal, life-enhancing tools, but it's easy to get caught up in the novelty and lose sight of what we're replacing. We are primates. We need social interaction; we need human touch and connection to thrive. It might be expedient to relegate some of the less emotionally or physically pleasant tasks to machines, but what are we giving up in the process?

It's like when parents are cautioned against too much screen time for their children. Research suggests it's not the addition of the screen time that's damaging, but the absence of what that screen time replaces. An electronic babysitter is helpful for a parent who is overwhelmed by the emotionally and physically draining constant need to attend to a young child's needs, but we neglect to ask why we need it in the first place. Why is it that parents are so overwhelmed that they aren't able to offer their children their attention and emotional presence? This question isn't an indictment of parents by any stretch. I have been there---I'm still there---and I know that the problem doesn't originate with one parent or one family, but with our society's expectations for us at a time when in-person community is often difficult to find. Not only are the children lacking connection, but their parents are, too, and both are trying to meet that need through machines. But why do we turn to a machine rather than addressing the actual problem? As some of the children in Turkle's book ask when faced with the idea of robot pets to provide companionship to grandparents in nursing homes: "Don't we have people for these jobs?"

That's one aspect of Turkle's argument. Another is how Internet interactions might be changing our interactions "in the real." When we're online, we don't interact with a whole person, and we don't interact as our whole selves. Either by developing an avatar or by curating photos, likes, dislikes, on social media, or by pre-editing our responses on texts and instant messaging, we project the image we want to project as we interact with others who are also projecting the image they want to project. We can't know for sure who's on the other end of our communications. We can't know for sure what is accurate, what is real, and what is a show. We risk losing the patience and practice for dealing with complete human beings. Even if we crave in-person interaction---and can find others who are also willing to set aside their devices---will we have the skills to engage with people in real life when we've been socialized online? While this is likely more of an issue for net natives than for those of us who spent our childhoods and teen years without the constant connection of Internet and cell phones, I also see it in myself and other people of my generation and older as we choose to avoid the potential discomfort of interacting with people we can't turn off or ignore in a socially acceptable way if things get too intense.

While I really enjoyed the major points of Turkle's book, there are also a couple of things I see as flaws. First, except for her studies with children's reactions to My Real Baby, she appears to rely primarily on people from middle- to upper middle-class backgrounds for her research, and as far as I can tell, exclusively on people along the East Coast of the United States. I wonder if she would have seen different reactions had she taken her studies to the Midwest, South, or West.

Second, the book was somewhat repetitive. She has some really great points, but they risk getting lost because she says them so many times, I am tempted to skim because I'm bored. But maybe this is just a result of my being programmed for online reading.

In the end, Turkle isn't arguing that we turn away from technology, but rather that we use it with our eyes wide open to both the benefits and the potential risks. ( )

Use consistent verb tense. Points subtracted. ( )

I was not expecting half of this book to be about companion robots. I find AI in general and robotic prosthetics interesting, but companion robots (and particularly children's reactions to them after brief exposure) are a big meh. Then again, I also thought the knockoff tomagachi I had as a kid was boring, so maybe I just don't have the right temperament for the "robotic moment."

The second half was more what I was expecting, and it was fine, but nothing revelatory (though probably that's unfair to ask of a book that's been out this long). And I'm not sure what it is exactly, I wouldn't say she's wrong, but I'm not sure she quite hit the nail on the head. ( )

A fascinating read in some aspects that touches on both the potential for good and for bad in our exposure and use of technology.

Where it falls flat however is that there seems to be no discernible conclusion or thread that hasn't been grout up before.

Still worth a read if you want to see how humans have changed just as much as the technology that drives our world today. ( )

An exceptionally well researched book that explore technology and the unintended effects it's having on how we interact with others and ourselves. Broken into two parts, the first half explores the robotic movement and the second half discusses networking online. I really wish there was a new updated edition (this was published in 2010) because so much has already changed. Advances in social media, online privacy (or lack thereof), and robotic developments. Turkle does a wonderful job discussing the pros and cons of our technological advancements and brings forth many soul searching questions. Is our morality changing? Our we becoming less satisfied with our lives? How do we present ourselves online? Is social media what determines our happiness? Are we becoming more fake and competitive? Wonderful and depressing read, a little outdated even though it's only 7 years old, jus goes to show how fast technology is advancing! ( )

I'm going to write an article about how digital natives (young people who have always had technology playing a major role in their lives) approach work, so I've been reading a lot about how people interact with technology and how that changes how they interact with one another. In this book, Sherry Turkle spends the first half examining how we relate to robots and other types of technology. Whether it is robotic toys or robotic caregivers, people come to expect more from technology and to treat technology as if it is human. On the other hand, technology has caused us to expect less from our relationships with each other. We communicate by text and pay more attention to our cell phones than our dinner partners, leading to a dearth of deep relationships and increasing discomfort with solitude. Turkle takes volumes of research and weaves it into a fascinating story. ( )

Fascinating! (And inspiring lots of story-ideas...)

Discovered this through an intriguing podcast featuring Ms Turkle: http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/alive-enough/

I was disappointed with this book. It felt a bit too much like I was reading the ramblings of an old granny complaining about "those kids today". To be sure Turkle does explore a wide range of interesting phenomena in the world of robotics and computing in general but I got the sense that she was trying to pick and choose the most extreme cases she came across throughout her research on human computer interaction. ( )

A most in-depth treatment of a very timely topic. The first third of the book addresses human-robot interaction (my favorite part). Much of this examined the projection of human personality onto the robots by those who encountered them at MIT's CSAIL and robotics labs -- admittedly a rarefied setting byut one I find compelling given my interest in AI and robotics.

The remaining 2/3 the book deals with the reshaping of human social contact via mobile phones. This was less interesting to me but probably more relevant to most readers, and far more immediate to the world most of us live in.

Turkle's writing is clear, well organized, and coherent. But she does immerse her story in small variations on her main theme more than I'd like. But it's easy enough to skim over those sections. Overall a very thought provoking cuting look t the cutting edge of physical HCI. ( )

Best critique of technology I've read in AGES. Turkle observes and records but does not judge. This, in my mind, sets her far above Carr and Morozov. Her insight, rigor, and methodology are impressive and the book is truly a must read for those concerned about the effect (affect) that networked technology has on our selves.

I found the second half to be much more powerful than the first. The book is split into two separate long-term studies. One of personable robots and the other of networked communications.

What makes this critique stand out is that Turkle is methodical and disciplined in her approach. Like McLuhan, she may have strong suspicion of the technologies she investigates, but she prioritizes understanding above judgement. She wants to know what it means for humans to talk to robots and for humans to communicate over networks. She has suspicions about the effects of these media and technologies, but she does not set out to prove her suspicions.

I've read other reviews that make the claim "Turkle hates technology." These clearly are missing something. She is critical of unexamined surrender to technology, but is very intentional (and correct IMHO) to point out that technology is not the problem, it is how we use and relate to technology. The root of a lot of these problems is this very tendency to humanize technology.

One of Turkle insights (shared w/ J. Lanier) is that when we attempt to talk about "artificial intelligence" or "human machines" we tend to change our definitions of intelligence and humanity, lowering our standards in order to anthropomorphize the machines. This is a mistake. Our tools are really freaking cool, there is no reason to pretend they are something more than tools. ( )

Non-Fiction, Technology, Society

This book sometimes gave me the chills, not because of some scary future it portrays but because Turkle poses, and attempts to answer, some of the deepest imaginable questions about human relationships and the impact of information technology and what another favorite auther, Nicco Mele (okay, he is my son), calls "radical connectivity" on our lives. By the way, Turkle is not out to scare us, but some of the encounters and interviews she relates are creepy enough to be discomforting. ( )

I found this book fascinating and also quite disturbing. Turkle, a clinical psychologist and MIT professor, discusses her observations and research on the impact digital immersion has had upon human relationships. What I found particularly interesting and troubling are the observations Turkle makes from the hundreds of interviews she has had with children and teens. There is much cause for concern in how digital immersion negatively affects the emotional, psychological, and social development of young people. ( )

Ok, but not quite what I expected. More academic than practical, but still good info. Reinforces the fact that multitasking makes us do many things poorly, and that we do lose something when we only connect through our devices. ( )