Sherry Turkle Quotations

Teenagers would rather text than talk. They feel calls would reveal too much.

The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.

It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.

It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.

Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.

I love sharing photographs and websites, I'm for all of these things. I'm for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made.

We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's 'full attention.' They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cell phones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don't look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.

There are moments of opportunity for families; moments they need to put technology away. These include: no phones or texting during meals. No phones or texting when parents pick up children at school - a child is looking to make eye contact with a parent!

What I'm seeing is a generation that says consistently, 'I would rather text than make a telephone call.' Why? It's less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don't have to get all involved; it's more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of 'Wired' magazine. Then things began to change. In the early '80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.

I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

It used to be that people had a way of dealing with the world that was basically, 'I have a feeling, I want to make a call.' Now I would capture a way of dealing with the world, which is: 'I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.'

Hold on to your passion - you'll need it!

We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.

As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.

Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.

We are not as strong as technology's pull.

One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.

The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.

We don't need to reject or disparage technology. We need to put it in its place,

Because you can text while doing something else, texting does not seem to take time but to give you time. This is more than welcome; it is magical.

Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.

We used to think, 'I have a feeling; I want to make a call.' Now our impulse is, 'I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.'

We're letting [technology] take us places that we don't want to go.

We're smitten with technology. And we're afraid, like young lovers, that too much talking might spoil the romance. But it's time to talk.

If behind popular fascination with Freudian theory there was a nervous, often guilty preoccupation with the self as sexual, behind increasing interest in computational interpretations of mind is an equally nervous preoccupation with the self as machine.

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.

If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.

We... heal ourselves by giving others what we most need.

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy

It all stems from the same thing - which is that when we are face to face - and this is what I think is so ironic about Facebook being called Facebook, because we are not face to face on Facebook ... when we are face to face, we are inhibited by the presence of the other. We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of Wired magazine. Then things began to change. In the early 80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

It’s a way of life to be always texting and when you looks at these texts it really is thoughts in formation. I do studies where I just sit for hours and hours at red lights watching people unable to tolerate being alone. Its as though being along has become a problem that needs to be solved and then technology presents itself as a solution to this problem…Being alone is not a problem that needs to be solved. The capacity for solitude is a very important human skill.

We ask [ of the computer ] not just about where we stand in nature, but about where we stand in the world of artefact. We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become.

Loneliness is failed solitude.

we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.

Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation.

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

We expect more from technology and less from each other.

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.

Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of people [they're] with and this 'other' reality.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they tend to reach for a device. In a movie theater, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves.

What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.

People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.

Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.

Technology doesn't just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.

We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.