Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Third Edition) - Softcover

Turkle, Sherry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465093655 ISBN 13: 9780465093656

Publisher: Basic Books, 2017

Synopsis

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Even the presence of sociable robots in our lives that pretend to demonstrate empathy makes us feel more isolated, as Turkle explains in a new introduction updating the book to the present day. Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on interviews with hundreds of children and adults, it describes new, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy and solitude.

About this title

Review:

"A fascinating portrait of our changing relationship with technology."--Newsweek.com

"Vivid, even lurid, in its depictions of where we are headed... [an] engrossing study."--Washington Post

"[Turkle] summarizes her new view of things with typical eloquence...fascinating, readable."--New York Times Book Review

"Important.... Admirably personal.... [Turkle's] book will spark useful debate."--Boston Globe

"Turkle is a sensitive interviewer and an elegant writer."--Slate.com

"Disturbing. Compelling. Powerful."--Seattle Times

"The picture that arises from [Alone Together] is not particularly comforting but it is always compelling and helps explain many behaviors one sees at play in society at large these days, especially among the young."--Jewish Exponent

"Readers will find this book a useful resource as they begin conversations about how to negotiate and critically engage the technology that suffuses our lives."--National Catholic Reporter

"Turkle is a gifted and imaginative writer... [who] pushes interesting arguments with an engaging style."--American Prospect

"Nobody has ever articulated so passionately and intelligently what we're doing to ourselves by substituting technologically mediated social interaction.... Equipped with penetrating intelligence and a sense of humor, Turkle surveys the front lines of the social-digital transformation."--Lev Grossman, TIME

Book Description:

"Nobody has ever articulated so passionately and intelligently what we're doing to ourselves by substituting technologically mediated social interaction. Equipped with penetrating intelligence and a sense of humor, Turkle surveys the front lines of the social-digital transformation." - Lev Grossman, TIME

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0465093655
• ISBN 13: 9780465093656
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 400