In "Cyberspace and Identity: The E-Mail Revolution", Sherry Turkle focuses on the virtual world, how she perceives it takes place in today's society. Turkle also focuses on the psychological impact that living in the virtual world has on our current reality.
Turkle, currently is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She also is the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts in the co-construction of identity (http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/techself). In addition, Turkle is the author of Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992); The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, forthcoming); and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997). One could say Turkle is an expert in predicting behavior when technology is concerned.
In Turkle's current assessment, she states that most people, when they are in the virtual world, assume different identities based on their mood or persona. I tend to agree with this assumption. One reason being that I know many people who have based a screen name or handle on just the mood they were feeling for that day. Some felt like being women, some men, some a fantasy character. These days, the diversity of personalities seems to never end in this fast evolving virtual world.
Turkle also believes that cyberspace has a range of psychological effects (273-74). She stated that for some people, it is a place to "act out" unresolved conflicts, to play and replay character logical difficulties on a new and exotic stage. I agree with this assumption as well. The only way some people may know how to deal with emotion, or cope with a situation is to escape for five minutes to a different reality. A reality that with the click of the button, can be created as calming of an atmosphere when needed.
Erik Erikson believed that people had to achieve something personally in order to move ahead in life. To not do so would bring complications through adulthood (274).
In “Modern Romance,” Celeste Biever describes romantic relationships in the Internet community. She describes how people can romantically be involved on the Internet and how the Internet teaches one to learn about a person from the inside out.In “Cyberspace and Identity,” Sherry Turkle also expresses her interest in the Internet and how it allows for the act of self-exploration. Even though their focus on what the Internet is used for are different from the perspective of one another, Biever and Turkle both see the Internet as a place for exploration in a general sense.
In both works, the authors identify how the influence on technology is changing how humans identify themselves. Carr using his experience to explain this idea giving the reader the idea that he is feeling the effect technology is taking in his identity. “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory “(53). He gives the reader a firsthand insight of how the influence of technology has change his own identity changing his mind as a whole. He also gives the example of becoming machinelike. A metaphor he uses to explain that humans are becoming emotionless, and less caring for certain ideas. They are becoming cold and brainless are the new part of their identity altering the ability to think. While, Turkle uses everyday life examples to emphasize this point. She states that people create avatars online to be represent their self the way they want to be. However, being able to change a certain aspect of an individual life alters the way they perceive who they are. According to Turkle “people who gain fluency in expressing multiples aspect of self may find it harder develop authentic selves. Some people who write narratives for their screen avatars may grow up with too little experience to share their real feelings with other people” (289). The meaning behind Turkle words is that technology is influencing how individuals view themselves, and become remapping the idea that humans are social
Have you ever thought about how technology is controlling your life? Then you should read Sherry Turkle’s “Growing Up Tethered”, and how her perspective on how technology and online interactions influence identity construction. “Growing up Tethered”, is a piece from her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and in this essay, Mrs. Turkle identifies and examines the adolescents growing up tethered to the wide force of technology that has come to characterize society. In more detail “growing up tethered” is stating that today’s adolescents are connected to peer pressure and in most cast parent surveillance. Turkle believes that teens must always be available to their friends and that they need a phone
Are technology and the media shedding the very fabric of the existence we have known? As technology and the media spread their influence, the debate over the inherent advantages and disadvantages intensifies. Although opinions vary widely on the subject, two writers offer similar views: Professor Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, in her article “Can You Hear Me Now” and Naomi Rockler-Gladen, who formerly taught media studies at Colorado State University, with her article “Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class.” Turkle asserts that technology has changed how people develop and view themselves, while at the same time affecting their concepts of time management and focus (270). Similarly, Rockler-Gladen believes media and its inherent advertising have had a profound effect on the values and thinking of the public (284). I could not agree more with Professor Turkle and Ms. Rockler-Gladen; the effects technology and media have worried and annoyed me for quite so time. The benefits of technology and media are undeniable, but so then are the flaws. People are beginning to shift their focus away from the physical world to the virtual world as they find it easier and more comfortable. The intended purpose of technology and media was to be a tool to improve the quality of life, not shackles to tie people to their devices. I no longer recognize this changed world and long for the simple world of my youth.
The human race has made extraordinarily rapid technological progress within the last few decades alone. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, a clinical psychologist and a published author examines society’s response to today’s numerous changes in her book Alone Together. Although at times Turkle overestimates the damage that technology is doing to our society, she makes many valid points about the dangers posed. In her book, the issues raised about our growing substitution of computers for human relationships proves to be problematic, while some of Turkle’s evidence is less ominous than she believes.
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Turkle’s stance on this topic is emotionally engaging as she uses rhetoric in a very powerful approach, while also remaining unbiased. The article flows very smoothly in a beautifully structured format. The author maintains a composition that would appeal to the interest of any sort of audience. She effectively questions the reader’s views on the negative consequences technology has on social interactions. Her work is inspiring, it sheds light on the dark hole society has dug for themselves, a state of isolation through communication in the digital age; this is a wake up
"Finding One's Own in Cyberspace." Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 171-178. SafeSurf. Press Release.
Advances in technology have complicated the way in which people are connecting with others around them and how it separates people from reality. In “Virtual Love” by Meghan Daum, she illustrates through the narrator 's point of view how a virtual relationship of communicating through emails and text messages can mislead a person into thinking that they actually have a bond with a person whom they have stuck their ideals onto and how the physical worlds stands as an obstacle in front of their relationship when the couple finally meets. In comparison, the article … While Daum and X discuss that technology pushes us apart and disconnects us from the physical world, they evoke a new light into explaining how technology creates the illusion of making
Introduction: Is information technology an identity technology? Over the past decade, the rapid advancement in technology has made a great impact on human lives that questions the identity of an individual. The following discussion will be about the reflections of Sherry Turkle on how online interaction and technology influence identity construction. For better understanding, it is important to analyze the analysis of Sherry Turkle of the computer as a reminiscent object and the human relationship with the object. Turkle’s observations on the identity online and its characteristics will be highlighted.
For centuries, humans have used their interaction with one another to help shape outsiders' perceptions of them. Often communication experts refer to this as constructing one’s “social identity.” For many years, this projection of self-came through interpersonal communication; face-to-face communication or other forms of personal interaction. In the progress of technology, this development of one’s personal attributes has come to include photographs, letters, published and unpublished writings, and physical attributes. Many aspects of a person’s “identity” as others see it are difficult and almost impossible to define. In the modern age, such vague characteristics are both helped and hindered by using social media and the internet to “construct”
First, Turkle states that cyberspace makes it possible to alter the textual representation according. Textual construction allows users to change their appearance or behavior with a couple strokes on the keyboard. People are given the chance to express themselves in a different light because of the relative anonymity in cyberspace. Role-playing and using different identities are exercised by either changing names or by changing places. People may change their identity each time they start "cycling through" their windows, and with each window comes a different persona. Therefore, a presence distributed over many windows causes a creation of many text-based identities.
In Wikipedia it states that “she now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. She has written several books focusing on the psychology of human relationships with technology, especially in the realm of how people relate to computational objects”. In her book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age she argues that text messaging, social media and emails have replaced face to face conversations. She claims that social media is harming people relationship by not interacting with one another. So many of us have friendships with people we could, with planning, see face-to-face but choose instead to “see” online. We become accustomed to experiencing this “convenience” as the normal way to spend time together. (173) Turkle feels that social media is taking over our lives and people is losing empathy for each other. Empathy means staying long enough for someone to believe that you want to know how they feel, not that you want to tell them what you would do in their circumstance. Empathy requires time and emotional discipline. (173) We need face to face interaction to experience the empathy one shows to another. A psychiatrist Daniel Siegel in Turkle book has taught us that children need eye contact to develop parts of the brain that are involved with attachment. (170) Empathy requires time and
This demonstrates how the points that Turkle wrote about are not based on how people feel about technology but based off the effects of technology that Turkle presented to them. Basically, she interviews people that have the same stances as her; which proves that it’s not an accurate representation of how people perceives technology.
This paper aims to explore the different reasons behind people having different personas in Twitter and real-life through a look at how the social networking site provides a unique opportunity for self...