Table of Contents ALSO BY SHERRY TURKLE Title Page Dedication Epigraph AUTHOR’S NOTE Introduction PART ONE - The Robotic Moment CHAPTER 1 - Nearest neighbors LIFE RECONSIDERED THE TAMAGOTCHI PRIMER UNFORGETTABLE CHAPTER 2 - Alive enough WHAT DOES A FURBY WANT? OPERATING PROCEDURES AN ETHICAL LANDSCAPE FROM THE ROMANTIC REACTION TO THE ROBOTIC MOMENT CHAPTER 3 - True companions SPARE PARTS GROWING UP AIBO FROM BETTER THAN NOTHING TO BETTER THAN ANYTHING SIMULTANEOUS VISIONS AND COLD COMFORTS CHAPTER 4 - Enchantment FROM MY REAL BABY TO MY REAL BABYSITTER DON’T WE HAVE PEOPLE FOR THESE JOBS? RORSCHACH TO RELATIONSHIP CHAPTER 5 - Complicities MECHANICAL TODDLERS BUILDING A “THOU” THROUGH THE BODY BUILDING A THOU THROUGH A FACE AND A VOICE BUILDING A THOU BY CARING BUILDING A THOU IN DISAPPOINTMENT AND ANGER AGAIN, ON AN ETHICAL TERRAIN CHAPTER 6 - Love’s labor lost CARING MACHINES CURING A LIFE COACHING AS CURE “A BEAUTIFUL THING” “A ROBOT THAT EVEN SHERRY WILL LOVE” DO ROBOTS CURE CONSCIENCE? CHAPTER 7 - Communion A MOMENT OF MORE: THE DANCER AND THE DANCE A MOMENT OF MORE: MERGING MIND AND BODY THROUGH THE EYES OF THE ROBOT CONSIDERING THE ROBOT FOR REAL PART TWO - Networked CHAPTER 8 - Always on THE NEW STATE OF THE SELF: TETHERED AND MARKED ABSENT THE NEW STATE OF THE SELF: FROM LIFE TO THE LIFE MIX THE NEW STATE OF THE SELF: MULTITASKING AND THE ALCHEMY OF TIME FEARFUL SYMMETRIES CHAPTER 9 - Growing up tethered DEGREES OF SEPARATION THE COLLABORATIVE SELF THE AVATAR OF ME PRESENTATION ANXIETY CHAPTER 10 - No need to call AUDREY: A LIFE ON THE SCREEN WHAT HAPPENS ON FACEBOOK, STAYS ON ? FINER DISTINCTIONS OVERWHELMED ACROSS THE GENERATIONS VOICES CHAPTER 11 - Reduction and betrayal SERIOUS PLAY: A SECOND LIFE LIFE ON THE SCREEN ADAM TEMPTATION CHAPTER 12 - True confessions VENTING THE CRUELTY OF STRANGERS SEEKING COMMUNITIES AFTER CONFESSION, WHAT? CHAPTER 13 - Anxiety RISK MANAGEMENT WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? HIDE AND STALK PRIVACY AND THE ANXIETIES OF ALWAYS PRIVACY HAS A POLITICS CHAPTER 14 - The nostalgia of the young ATTENTION SPONTANEITY THE PERILS OF PERFORMANCE WALDEN 2.0 CONCLUSION EPILOGUE NOTES INDEX Copyright Page ALSO BY SHERRY TURKLE Psychoanalytic Politics The Second Self Life on the Screen Evocative Objects (Ed.) Falling for Science (Ed.) The Inner History of Devices (Ed.) Simulation and Its Discontents TO REBECCA My letter to you, with love “Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.” —Plato, The Republic “I’m done with smart machines I want a machine that’s attentive to my needs Where are the sensitive machines?” —Tweet available at dig_natRT @tigoe via @ramonapringle AUTHOR’S NOTE Turning points Thirty years ago, when I joined the faculty at MIT to study computer culture, the world retained a certain innocence Children played tic-tac-toe with their electronic toys, video game missiles took on invading asteroids, and “intelligent” programs could hold up their end of a serious chess match The first home computers were being bought by people called hobbyists The people who bought or built them experimented with programming, often making their own simple games No one knew to what further uses home computers might be put The intellectual buzz in the still-young field of artificial intelligence was over programs that could recognize simple shapes and manipulate blocks AI scientists debated whether machines of the future would have their smarts programmed into them or whether intelligence might emerge from simple instructions written into machine hardware, just as neurobiologists currently imagine that intelligence and reflective self-consciousness emerge from the relatively simple architecture and activity of the human brain Now I was among them and, like any anthropologist, something of a stranger in a strange land I had just spent several years in Paris studying how psychoanalytic ideas had spread into everyday life in France—how people were picking up and trying on this new language for thinking about the self I had come to MIT because I sensed that something similar was happening with the language of computers Computational metaphors, such as “debugging” and “programming,” were starting to be used to think about politics, education, social life, and—most central to the analogy with psychoanalysis—about the self While my computer science colleagues were immersed in getting computers to do ingenious things, I had other concerns How were computers changing us as people? My colleagues often objected, insisting that computers were “just tools.” But I was certain that the “just” in that sentence was deceiving We are shaped by our tools And now, the computer, a machine on the border of becoming a mind, was changing and shaping us As a psychoanalytically trained psychologist, I wanted to explore what I have called the “inner history of devices.”1 Discovering an inner history requires listening—and often not to the first story told Much is learned from the tossedoff aside, the comment made when the interview is “officially” over To do my work, I adopted an ethnographic and clinical style of research as I lived in worlds new to me But instead of spending hundreds of hours in simple dwellings, as an anthropologist in a traditional setting would do, listening to the local lore, I lurked around computer science departments, home computer hobbyist clubs, and junior high school computer laboratories I asked questions of scientists, home computer owners, and children, but mostly I listened to how they talked and watched how they behaved among their new “thinking” machines I heard computers provoke erudite conversations Perhaps, people wondered, the human mind is just a programmed machine, much like a computer Perhaps if the mind is a program, free will is an illusion Most strikingly, these conversations occurred not just in seminar rooms They were taking place around kitchen tables and in playrooms Computers brought philosophy into everyday life; in particular, they turned children into philosophers In the presence of their simple electronic games—games that played tic-tac-toe or challenged them in spelling—children asked if computers were alive, if they had different ways of thinking from people, and what, in the age of smart machines, was special about being a person In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I witnessed a moment when we were confronted with machines that invited us to think differently about human thought, memory, and understanding The computer was an evocative object that provoked self-reflection For me, this was captured in a conversation I had with thirteen-year-old Deborah in the early 1980s After a year of studying programming, Deborah said that, when working with the computer, “there’s a little piece of your mind and now it’s a little piece of the computer’s mind.” Once this was achieved, you could see yourself “differently.”2 Face-to-“face” with a computer, people reflected on who they were in the mirror of the machine In 1984, thinking about Deborah (and in homage as well to Simone de Beauvoir), I called my first book on computers and people The Second Self That date, 1984, is of course iconic in Western intellectual thinking, tethered as it is to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes a society that subjects people to constant government surveillance, public mind control, and loss of individual rights I find it ironic that my own 1984 book, about the technology that in many a science fiction novel makes possible such a dystopian world, was by contrast full of hope and optimism I had concerns about the Ramona (avatar) Real, virtual and Realtechnik Recollection, collection and Relationships building complexities of intensity of with less no-risk real, in the robots and safety, feeling of sanctioning of robotic skills sociable robots and titrating distance and (“Goldilocks effect”) reflecting on virtual weak-tie Remembrance of Things Past (Proust) Republic, The (Plato) Resignation, Thoreau’s view of Riesman, David Robot companions attitudes about control issues and elderly and loneliness and physical involvement with promise of Robotic moment behaviorism of psychological risks of romantic reaction and roboticists, views of Robotics connectivity and elderly and nurturance as “killer app” in Robots aggression, as a way to connect with animating with one’s own personality caring by connection to, children’s desire for and conscience, balm to daily life, considering role in discontents with conversations with humanoid human caretaker, preference for merging with (Lindman) as performative physical contact with, power of relationships with sex with as substitute humans as superheroes as uncanny Rock Band (simulation) Roller Coaster Tycoon (game) Romantic reaction robotic moment and Rorschach, robots as Roxxxy Safety, desire for Sandel, Michael Scassellati, Brian Cog and Schmidt, Eric Schüll, Natasha Scientific American Second Life advertisement for avatars on communities and joining overstimulation on Second Self, The (Turkle) Self collaborative inner-/other-directed sense of new state of site and Self-presentation, performance and Self-reflection Self-surveillance Selfobjects, role of Separation in adolescence as rejection September 11th Sex with robots reverse engineering Sex dolls, burials for Shakespeare, William Shibata, Takanori Simon (electronic game) Simon, Herbert Sims Online (game) Simulation as catharsis as coursening Simultaneous vision Skype Slick, Grace Sociable robots adolescents and aggression toward alive enough, pragmatic notion of care/attention, desire that they provide as companions disappointment with, effects of elder care and ethical terrain, on new and intimacy, ideas about networked life and performances by philosophical traditions in dialogue with, and relationships with reflecting on as symptom and dream of Social networks hacking and profiles and identity on Solitude intimacy and Sontag, Susan Sony Space public and private online, special qualities of sacred Speak & Spell (electronic game) Spielberg, Steven Spontaneity, loss of in online life Spoon (band) Stalking, online Star Wars (film) Starner, Thad Starr, Ringo State Radio (band) Storr, Anthony Strangers confessions, online, and as “friended,” Super Mario (game) Symptoms, dreams and Tamagotchis caring for death of feelings attributed to primer, notion of Technology blaming communities and complex ecology of complex effects of confusion about relationships and efficiency and embracing, with cost and expectations of ourselves holding power of keeping it busy, notion of mythology and narcissistic style and Oedipal story to discuss limitations of as prosthesis thinking about Teddy bears Tethered life Texts apology, use of for complexity of feelings about control, and conversations through feelings, path toward giving up hastily composed as interruptions loneliness and protective qualities of reflecting on (adolescents) seductiveness of speed up of communication and spontaneity and teaching parents about Thompson, Clive Thoreau, Henry David Toddlers, mechanical (Kismet and Cog) Transference, the Trust robotic Turing, Alan Turing test, the Turner, Victor Turtles, live/robot Twain, Mark Tweets Twitter Ultima 2 (game) Upside-down test (Freedom Baird) Vacations, offline Vadrigar Venting Virginia Tech Virtual self and virtual places Voice Voicemail Walden (Thoreau) Walden 2.0: WALL-E (film) Wandukan, development of Weak ties Wearable Computing Group (MIT) Weiner, Norbert: cybernetics and Weizenbaum, Joseph Wi-Fi Willard, Rebecca Ellen Turkle Wired World of Warcraft (game) YouTube Zhu Zhu pet hamsters Zone, The a In this book I use the terms the Net, the network, and connectivity to refer to our new world of online connections—from the experience of surfing the Web, to email, texting, gaming, and social networking And I use the term cell phone to describe a range of connectivity devices such as BlackBerries and iPhones that do a lot more than make “calls.” They provide access to instant messaging, texting, e-mail, and the Web b This name and the names of others I observed and interviewed for this book are pseudonyms To protect the anonymity of my subjects, I also change identifying details such as location and profession When I cite the opinions of scientists or public figures, I use their words with permission And, of course, I cite material on the public record Copyright © 2011 by Sherry Turkle Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810 Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext 5000, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Turkle, Sherry Alone together : why we expect more from technology and less from each other / Sherry Turkle p cm eISBN : 978-0-465-02234-2 Information technology—Social aspects Interpersonal relations Human-computer interaction I Title HM851.T86 2010 303.48’33—dc22 2010030614 ... playrooms: by the late 1990s, children were presented with digital “creatures” that made demands for attention and seemed to pay attention to them Alone Together picks up these two strands in the story of digital culture over the past fifteen years, with a focus on the young, those from five through their... I have worked with Kelly Gray on six book projects In each one, her dedication, intelligence, and love of language have been sustaining In Alone Together, whose primary data spans thirty years of life in the computer culture, it was Kelly who helped me find the narrative for the book I wanted to write... book project is over; my preoccupation with its themes stays with me Sherry Turkle BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS AUGUST 2010 INTRODUCTION Alone together Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies These days, it suggests substitutions that put the real on the run