This is an excerpt based on Sherry Turkle’s appearance at the TED talks 2012. It was taken from a live blog feed…
“”Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.”
Technology appeals to us where we’re most vulnerable, says Turkle. “It gives us the illusion of companionship without the means of friendship.
“It feeds the fantasy that we will always be heard, and we will never be alone.”
And it’s changing our psyches.
It “makes being alone feel like a problem that needs to be solved. Where the moment people are alone they reach for a device.”
We need to learn to be alone, says Turkle. We even have to re-learn how to be bored. “We all really need to listen to each other including during the boring bits. When we lose our words or stumble it’s when we reveal ourselves.”
We need to use technology to bring us back to our real lives.”