#technological determinisim

From watching Sherry Turkle’s TED talk, I had a conflicting views on the content she said. While I agree with many of her statements, which I will get to, I found that much of what she said portrayed a very pessimistic technologically deterministic view on how technology is shaping the society, and interaction of teens today. To summarize, briefly, technological determinism is the view that technology is shaping our society today. I feel that Turkle puts much of the blame on social media, and our advancements in this digital revolution, for the lack of physical communication. She finds this concerning, especially when the young adolescent told her he wants to learn how to have a normal conversation. 

An example that came to mind was the novel written by Danah Boyd, it’s complicated. Boyd focused much of her research in the social lives of teens via internet, and their management of such identities through social media. With the interviews she had taken, Boyd found that teens are really using their phones for  “ means to a social end” (18) and that they are motivated by “friendship” (18). I don’t think that Turkle would disagree with this statement, but would still argue that technology is causing them to use these devices for socialization. But Boyd, furthermore, states that reasoning behind this is due to the cultural aspect of  getting together in person (being) highly constrained” (19), specifically in the life of a busy teenager. But I don’t think that this necesarrily contradicts what Turkle means by “being alone”. 

I find myself agreeing with her claim: “if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely”. Bridging off of my own personal experience, being an only child, I had to “force” myself to not feel lonely. In fact, I think this helped me cherish the moments I had face to face. I think that both Boyd and Turkle would agree that we are engrained to believe that we need to always be with someone, that being alone equate to feeling lonely. I found that this was not that case, and I do think that it would be important for parents to teach their children why being alone is not always a bad thing.

I’m really not trying to bash Turkle-- I did find many things that sparked my interest. In addition to Turkle’s piece, I found an interesting connection between her and Brownstein’s work. Within in the first few minutes of Turkles talk, she states “we are letting (technology) take us to the places we don’t want to go”. In Brownstein’s movie, Laura Harrier comments “mom” on Natasha Lyonne’s Instagram picture, and is asked by this unknown man if she truly wanted Natasha to be her mother. While this skit shows some humor behind this, i think relates back to what Turkle claimed: we don’t actually want to go there. We see that there were regrets in Laura’s decision to accept Natasha as her mom. Summing up Brownstein’s video, through Brownstein’s own words,  the video is “about the idea that you can kind of insert yourself into the narrative of someone’s life, and into your idol’s life”. I think that this is where Turkle would also argue why we are alone on the Internet.

Boyd, D. (2014). It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens [PDF]. 

Turkle, Sherry. “Connected, but Alone?” Ted.com. TED, Feb. 2012. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.

Watercutter, Angela. “Carrie Brownstein’s New Social Media Satire Film Is Brilliant.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 13 Sept. 2016. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.

link to the pdf version of it’s complicated

other links:

https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together/transcript?language=en#t-694693