Alone Together

I bought this book for the second half - on social media and its effects on human relationships - and so skipped the section on sociable robots. Perhaps I will go back and read this section later.

I was a little hesitant after reading the introduction - Turkle is a psychoanalytically trained psychologist, and I was afraid that her writing would be focused on completely unprovable psychoanalytic theories. However, her area of expertise only comes out in her insistence that it is human relationships that create growth - and while unprovable, this is not an extreme stand.

I appreciated the discussions with teens regarding the ubiquitousness of cell phones and the changes it has caused in their lives as compared to mine at a similar age. This is the first writing I have seen that admits that etiquette has changed such that a phone call is now considered the kind of intrusion that an unannounced visit once might have been. And I am intrigued and plan to do some thinking myself on Facebook as a performance medium - are we sharing our lives with our friends, or are we performing them?

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.