39 pages • 1 hour read
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Complicity
Early on in Chapter 1, Turkle writes, “at the robotic moment, more than ever, our willingness to engage with the inanimate does not depend on being deceived but on wanting to fill in the blanks” (24).She names this the “ELIZA effect” after the students’ tendency to ask the basic program questions that it could answer and “that would make it seem more lifelike” (23).This tendency for the user to “help” the robot that can’t yet carry on a conversation in a convincingly human way or to supply his or her own rationalization for glitches is what Turkle means when she says we are drawn into “necessary complicities” (86). There is some desire in us to help these robots seem more alive in order to receive the reward of their companionship.
This comes up again and again in the book. When Cog, the social robot, malfunctions or breaks, the children ask if it is sick and are keen to help it get better. Behind this impulse, Turkle tells us, is “a wish to come ever closer to our creations—to be somehow enlivened by them” (129).
Identity
In the latter half of the book, Turkle studies many people who have used online spaces, from Second Life to Facebook, to forge new identities. She admits that identity shaping is not a new concept—it’s been with us forever—but online social worlds provide new and radical ways to shape identity, and the danger is that “over time, such performances of identity may feel like identity itself” (12).
Online worlds can work as “identity workshops” (12) because they can provide new tools for adolescents to exploring who they are: they can be older or younger, cooler or more fashionable. But along with this new ability to “play,” there is a downside—that such experimentation can be recorded. And so such “workshops” both facilitate and inhibit the construction of a typical adolescent’s identity.
Ultimately Turkle concludes that online life inhibits this kind of identity dress-up more than it facilitates it because “adolescents need a place of stillness, a place to gather themselves” (271), which is difficult to find within the cacophony of the social internet.
Unlock all 39 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Sherry Turkle
