Selection From Alone By Sherry Turrkle Analysis

In “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson discusses the concept of spectatorship in a lawless environment and those who wish to act as vigilantes in that environment. Furthermore, Sherry Turkle, in “Selections From Alone Together”, examines the relationship between children and artificially intelligent toys and the possible negative outcomes that can come from the relationship. Additionally, Azar Nafisi explains the human rights violations that occur in Iran in “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran”. All three of these authors discuss the fact that human beings, whether he or she be a child or an adult, when given resources, can be dangerous and ironically, can do inhumane actions. Therefore, the real question is what are the resources and who …show more content…
Although no one was actually getting shocked, the individuals in the experiment truly believed that they were giving deadly amounts of shock energy to others. During the experiment, many did hesitate to shock individuals, but when the person in the lab coat told them to do shock others, they would do it. Therefore, for a long time, people believed that it was due to the presence of an authoritative figure, such as the guy in the labcoat. However, that is not necessarily the case. Another experiment was done in which individuals were invited to a fake game show called “the Game of Death” (Nelson, 302). This game had the same premise as Stanley Milgram’s experiment, if a person got a question wrong, then they would be shocked by the individual. However, the main difference of these two experiments were the fact that one involved a guy in the lab coat and the other involved “a smiling host” (Nelson, 302). This suggests that individuals looks for the opportunity to participate in this “sadistic” act (Nelson, …show more content…
If the toy screams, then there is too much reinforcement and can cause sadistic behavior for the opposite reason as before. Similarly, American soldiers should not receive too much reinforcement by the media and photos. Nelson argues that the government should confront the American soldiers these crimes strictly, while Obama believes that they should be protected due to the potential backlash. However, both of them are wrong, but they both have the right idea. Like the My Real Baby toy, the government should not scream at the American soldiers and punish them because that would not be effective. Also, they should not completely ignore the problem as Obama suggests. They should however find a middle ground, where the American soldiers know their mistakes and have learned from them, but they are not overly punished to the point where they execute sadistic acts. Interestingly, the way the situation was handled in the end did have the perfect mixture of reinforcement. This is because people knew the soldiers knew the mistakes due to the photographs, but did not receive a punishment by the