Alone Together By Sherry Turkle Analysis

Sherry Turkle elaborates on how technology has impacted society in both the book, Alone Together, and the video, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Turkle’s general argument is that the advancement of technology reduces our empathy as well as gives a misconception of connectivity. In both the book and video, she provides evidence that this is actually true. A real life example that justifies her argument is when I go to the Adele Stamp Union, I see people eating and on their phones. It is rare to see people actually carrying verbal conversations with the people that they were eating with. Technology has hindered the way we communicate and how we interact with others. Because we are engaged in computers and cell …show more content…
I believe what Turkle is saying is that when we are constantly texting and on these technological devices, we have a sense of connectivity. This causes one to think that engaging in social networks and other activities on phones is a necessity to live. When we interacting connected to those online, we are actually dissociating ourselves from the people around us. This precondition effects some of the most important aspects of life, which include the sense of self and relationships to people and …show more content…
Turkle said, “We are in a crisis of empathy. The cure for this crisis in empathy is conversation,” said Turkle. In personal experiences, I have used technology to eschew from situations I didn’t feel comfortable in. If someone comes and sits with me in the diner, but I don’t want to talk, I instantly get on my phone. In this generation especially, we feel the need to be on our phones because we have been around this advanced technology for our entire lives. People now lack face to face conversation because we feel the need to revolve our lives around technology. We would much rather email our professors rather than going to their office and talking to them. Also, in our generation when someone likes your photos on a social network one may believe that that is flirting. If his same thing were to happen in real life, a person would be able to tell if someone actually liked them or just like their image. I firmly agree with Turkle’s argument because we can’t really express our true feelings via email or text like we could if we just held face to face