Alone Together (61 page)
Authors: Sherry Turkle
7
Sherry Turkle,
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 182.
Sherry Turkle,
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 182.
8
See “What Is Second Life,” Second Life,
http://secondlife.com/whatis
(accessed June 13, 2010).
See “What Is Second Life,” Second Life,
http://secondlife.com/whatis
(accessed June 13, 2010).
9
There is evidence that people experience what they do online as though it happened in the physical real. See, for example, Nick Yee, Jeremy Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut, “The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-representation on Online and Offline Behavior,”
Communication Research
36, no. 2: 285-312. For a video introduction to work in this area by Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, directed by Jeremy Bailenson, see, “The Avatar Effect,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/virtual-worlds/second-lives/the-avatar-effect.html?play
(accessed September 2, 2009).
There is evidence that people experience what they do online as though it happened in the physical real. See, for example, Nick Yee, Jeremy Bailenson, and Nicolas Ducheneaut, “The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-representation on Online and Offline Behavior,”
Communication Research
36, no. 2: 285-312. For a video introduction to work in this area by Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, directed by Jeremy Bailenson, see, “The Avatar Effect,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/virtual-worlds/second-lives/the-avatar-effect.html?play
(accessed September 2, 2009).
10
Pete accesses Second Life through an iPhone application known as Spark. It does not bring the entire world to him, but it does enable conversation.
Pete accesses Second Life through an iPhone application known as Spark. It does not bring the entire world to him, but it does enable conversation.
11
Pete insists that Alison does not know of his double life. Over the past twenty years I have had many conversations about virtual infidelity. In the case of women whose husbands are virtually unfaithful, there are sharp differences of opinion. Some think it is preferable to any physical infidelity. Others think it is the worst kind of infidelity, an infidelity that involves not simply sex but talking, considering another, making plans, and building a life.
Pete insists that Alison does not know of his double life. Over the past twenty years I have had many conversations about virtual infidelity. In the case of women whose husbands are virtually unfaithful, there are sharp differences of opinion. Some think it is preferable to any physical infidelity. Others think it is the worst kind of infidelity, an infidelity that involves not simply sex but talking, considering another, making plans, and building a life.
12
In online life, weak ties—the ties of acquaintanceship—are often celebrated as the best ties of all. For the seminal work on weak ties, see Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,”
American Journal of Sociology
78, no. 6 (1973): 1360-1380, and “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,”
Sociological Theory
1 (1983): 201-233.
In online life, weak ties—the ties of acquaintanceship—are often celebrated as the best ties of all. For the seminal work on weak ties, see Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,”
American Journal of Sociology
78, no. 6 (1973): 1360-1380, and “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,”
Sociological Theory
1 (1983): 201-233.
13
Turkle,
Life on the Screen.
Turkle,
Life on the Screen.
14
This is sometimes referred to as “continuous partial attention,” a phrase widely credited to media researcher Linda Stone. See Stone’s blog at
www.lindastone.net
(accessed August 24, 2009).
This is sometimes referred to as “continuous partial attention,” a phrase widely credited to media researcher Linda Stone. See Stone’s blog at
www.lindastone.net
(accessed August 24, 2009).
15
Those who study the boundaries between work and the rest of life suggest that it is helpful to demarcate our changing roles. Sue Campbell Clark, “Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance,”
Human Relations
53, no. 6 (2000): 747-770; Stephan Desrochers and Leisa D. Sargent, “Work-Family Boundary Ambiguity, Gender and Stress in Dual-Earner Couples” (paper presented at the conference “From 9-to-5 to 24/7: How Workplace Changes Impact Families, Work, and Communities,” 2003 BPW/Brandeis University Conference, Orlando, Florida, March 2003); and Michelle Shumate and Janet Fulk, “Boundaries and Role Conflict When Work and Family Are Colocated: A Communication Network and Symbolic Interaction Approach,”
Human Relations
57, no. 1 (2004): 55-74.
Those who study the boundaries between work and the rest of life suggest that it is helpful to demarcate our changing roles. Sue Campbell Clark, “Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance,”
Human Relations
53, no. 6 (2000): 747-770; Stephan Desrochers and Leisa D. Sargent, “Work-Family Boundary Ambiguity, Gender and Stress in Dual-Earner Couples” (paper presented at the conference “From 9-to-5 to 24/7: How Workplace Changes Impact Families, Work, and Communities,” 2003 BPW/Brandeis University Conference, Orlando, Florida, March 2003); and Michelle Shumate and Janet Fulk, “Boundaries and Role Conflict When Work and Family Are Colocated: A Communication Network and Symbolic Interaction Approach,”
Human Relations
57, no. 1 (2004): 55-74.
16
Media theorist Henry Jenkins is an eloquent spokesperson for the significance of multitasking. See “The Skill of the Future: In a Word ‘Multitasking,’”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/split-focus/the-skill-of-the-future
. html? (accessed November 16, 2009). His other online interviews on the Digital Nation website beautifully capture a vision of schools bending to new media sensibilities. See “The Tech Fix,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digital-nation/learning/schools/the-tech-fix.html?play
(accessed November 14, 2009), and “Defenders of the Book,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/literacy/defenders-of-the-book.html?play
(accessed November 14, 2009).
Media theorist Henry Jenkins is an eloquent spokesperson for the significance of multitasking. See “The Skill of the Future: In a Word ‘Multitasking,’”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/split-focus/the-skill-of-the-future
. html? (accessed November 16, 2009). His other online interviews on the Digital Nation website beautifully capture a vision of schools bending to new media sensibilities. See “The Tech Fix,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digital-nation/learning/schools/the-tech-fix.html?play
(accessed November 14, 2009), and “Defenders of the Book,”
PBS.org
,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/literacy/defenders-of-the-book.html?play
(accessed November 14, 2009).
17
The literature on the downside of multitasking is growing. An influential and much-reported study is Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony Wagner, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106 (2009): 15583-15587,
www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583
(accessed August 10, 2010). This study found that when people multitask, everything they do is degraded in quality. An excellent work on the general topic is Maggie Jackson,
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
(New York: Prometheus, 2008). On the practical downside of thinking that we can do more than one thing at once, see, for example, the nine-part series on the
New York Times
website titled “Driven to Distraction,” covering such topics as doing office work while driving at 60 mph, drivers and legislators dismissing cell phone risks, and New York taxi drivers ignoring the ban on cell phone use while driving. “Driven to Distraction,”
New York Times
,
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/technology/series/driven_to_distraction/index.html
(accessed November 14, 2009).
The literature on the downside of multitasking is growing. An influential and much-reported study is Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony Wagner, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
106 (2009): 15583-15587,
www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583
(accessed August 10, 2010). This study found that when people multitask, everything they do is degraded in quality. An excellent work on the general topic is Maggie Jackson,
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
(New York: Prometheus, 2008). On the practical downside of thinking that we can do more than one thing at once, see, for example, the nine-part series on the
New York Times
website titled “Driven to Distraction,” covering such topics as doing office work while driving at 60 mph, drivers and legislators dismissing cell phone risks, and New York taxi drivers ignoring the ban on cell phone use while driving. “Driven to Distraction,”
New York Times
,
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/technology/series/driven_to_distraction/index.html
(accessed November 14, 2009).
Teenagers routinely drive and text; we know this because their automobile accidents are traced back to texting and cell phone use. A 2009 study of twenty-one teenagers showed them changing speed and weaving in and out of lanes while texting. Eastern Virginia Medical School, “Texting While Driving Can Be Deadly, Study Shows,”
ScienceDaily
, May 5, 2009,
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090504094434.htm
(accessed January 4, 2010). A larger study of nine hundred teenagers in 2007 showed 50 percent of them texted while driving despite the fact that 36 percent of them thought this was dangerous. See Steve Vogel, “Teen Driver Menace: Text-Messaging,” Suite101, October 22, 2007,
http://parentingteens.suite101.com/article.cfm/teen_driver_menace_textmessaging
(accessed January 4, 2009).
ScienceDaily
, May 5, 2009,
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090504094434.htm
(accessed January 4, 2010). A larger study of nine hundred teenagers in 2007 showed 50 percent of them texted while driving despite the fact that 36 percent of them thought this was dangerous. See Steve Vogel, “Teen Driver Menace: Text-Messaging,” Suite101, October 22, 2007,
http://parentingteens.suite101.com/article.cfm/teen_driver_menace_textmessaging
(accessed January 4, 2009).
Adults also text while driving. Trains collide while conductors text. A plane flies past its destination airport because its pilots are absorbed in a new computer program. In October 2009, pilots attending to their laptop computers—behavior in defiance of safety regulations—were the cause of an aircraft overshooting its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. “The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.” See Micheline Maynard and Matthew L. Wald, “Off-Course Pilots Cite Computer Distraction,”
New York Times
, October 26, 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/27plane.html?_r=1
(accessed November 16, 2009).
New York Times
, October 26, 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/27plane.html?_r=1
(accessed November 16, 2009).
18
In practical terms, what works best is to remind students that media literacy is about knowing when not to use technology as well as how to use it. I am optimistic that over time, we will make better use of technology in the classroom and we will be less afraid to turn it off when that is what makes sense pedagogically.
In practical terms, what works best is to remind students that media literacy is about knowing when not to use technology as well as how to use it. I am optimistic that over time, we will make better use of technology in the classroom and we will be less afraid to turn it off when that is what makes sense pedagogically.
19
Melissa Mazmanian, “Some Thoughts on BlackBerries” (unpublished memo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005). See also Melissa Mazmanian, Wanda Orlikowski, and Joanne Yates, “Ubiquitous E-mail: Individual Experiences and Organizational Consequences of BlackBerry Use,”
Proceedings of the 65th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management
, Atlanta, Georgia, August 2006,
http://seeit.mit.edu/Publications/BlackBerry_AoM.pdf
(accessed August 24, 2009).
Melissa Mazmanian, “Some Thoughts on BlackBerries” (unpublished memo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005). See also Melissa Mazmanian, Wanda Orlikowski, and Joanne Yates, “Ubiquitous E-mail: Individual Experiences and Organizational Consequences of BlackBerry Use,”
Proceedings of the 65th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management
, Atlanta, Georgia, August 2006,
http://seeit.mit.edu/Publications/BlackBerry_AoM.pdf
(accessed August 24, 2009).
20
The first book club selection by Arianna Huffington for the
Huffington Post’s
book club was Carl Honoré’s
In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
The first book club selection by Arianna Huffington for the
Huffington Post’s
book club was Carl Honoré’s
In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
21
Diana B. Gant and Sara Kiesler, “Blurring the Boundaries: Cell Phones, Mobility and the Line Between Work and Personal Life,” in
Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age
, ed. N. G. R. H. Brown (New York: Springer, 2001).
Diana B. Gant and Sara Kiesler, “Blurring the Boundaries: Cell Phones, Mobility and the Line Between Work and Personal Life,” in
Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age
, ed. N. G. R. H. Brown (New York: Springer, 2001).
22
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York; Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York; Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
23
Thomas R. Herzog et al., “Reflection and Attentional Recovery As Distinctive Benefits of Restorative Environments,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
17 (1997): 165-170. See also Stephen Kaplan, “The Restorative Benefits of Nature: Toward an Integrative Framework,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
15 (1995): 169-182.
Thomas R. Herzog et al., “Reflection and Attentional Recovery As Distinctive Benefits of Restorative Environments,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
17 (1997): 165-170. See also Stephen Kaplan, “The Restorative Benefits of Nature: Toward an Integrative Framework,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
15 (1995): 169-182.
24
I studied teenagers from a wide range of economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds. They attended seven different schools: two private boys preparatory schools, one in an urban center (Fillmore) and one in a rural setting (Hadley), one urban private girls school (Richelieu), an urban Catholic coeducational high school (Silver Academy), a private urban coeducational high school (Cranston), and two public high schools, one suburban (Roosevelt) and one urban (Branscomb). All students, from wealthy to disadvantaged, had cell phones with texting capability. Class distinctions showed themselves not in whether students possessed a phone but in what kind of contract they had with their providers. Teenagers with fewer resources, such as Julia in the following chapter, tended to have plans that constrained who they could text for free. Free texts are most usually for people on the same network. Ever resourceful, students with restricted plans try to get their friends to sign up with their cell providers. We shall see that teenagers don’t care much about who they can call. I often hear, “I never use my calling minutes.” On teenagers and digital culture, see Mizuko Ito et. al.,
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Learning and Living with New Media
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010) and Danah Boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning—Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Davind Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: Mit Press 2007), 119-142.
CHAPTER 9: GROWING UP TETHEREDI studied teenagers from a wide range of economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds. They attended seven different schools: two private boys preparatory schools, one in an urban center (Fillmore) and one in a rural setting (Hadley), one urban private girls school (Richelieu), an urban Catholic coeducational high school (Silver Academy), a private urban coeducational high school (Cranston), and two public high schools, one suburban (Roosevelt) and one urban (Branscomb). All students, from wealthy to disadvantaged, had cell phones with texting capability. Class distinctions showed themselves not in whether students possessed a phone but in what kind of contract they had with their providers. Teenagers with fewer resources, such as Julia in the following chapter, tended to have plans that constrained who they could text for free. Free texts are most usually for people on the same network. Ever resourceful, students with restricted plans try to get their friends to sign up with their cell providers. We shall see that teenagers don’t care much about who they can call. I often hear, “I never use my calling minutes.” On teenagers and digital culture, see Mizuko Ito et. al.,
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Learning and Living with New Media
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010) and Danah Boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life,” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning—Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. Davind Buckingham (Cambridge, MA: Mit Press 2007), 119-142.
1
Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
(1982; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
(1982; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
2
Erik Erikson,
Identity and the Life Cycle
(1952; New York: W. W. Norton, 1980) and
Childhood and Society
(New York: Norton, 1950).
Erik Erikson,
Identity and the Life Cycle
(1952; New York: W. W. Norton, 1980) and
Childhood and Society
(New York: Norton, 1950).
3
In Julia’s world, e-mail is considered “slow” and rarely used because texting has greater immediacy.
In Julia’s world, e-mail is considered “slow” and rarely used because texting has greater immediacy.
4
It is so common to see teenagers (and others) attending to their mobiles rather than what is around them, that it was possible for a fake news story to gain traction in Britain. Taken up by the media, the story went out that there was a trial program to pad lampposts in major cities. Although it was a hoax, I fell for it when it was presented online as news. In fact, in the year prior to the hoax, one in five Britons did walk into a lamppost or other obstruction while attending to a mobile device. This is not surprising because research reported that “62 per cent of Britons concentrate so hard on their mobile phone when texting they lose peripheral vision.” See Charlie Sorrel, “Padded Lampposts Cause Fuss in London,”
Wired
, March 10, 2008,
www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/03/padded-lamposts
(accessed October 5, 2009).
It is so common to see teenagers (and others) attending to their mobiles rather than what is around them, that it was possible for a fake news story to gain traction in Britain. Taken up by the media, the story went out that there was a trial program to pad lampposts in major cities. Although it was a hoax, I fell for it when it was presented online as news. In fact, in the year prior to the hoax, one in five Britons did walk into a lamppost or other obstruction while attending to a mobile device. This is not surprising because research reported that “62 per cent of Britons concentrate so hard on their mobile phone when texting they lose peripheral vision.” See Charlie Sorrel, “Padded Lampposts Cause Fuss in London,”
Wired
, March 10, 2008,
www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/03/padded-lamposts
(accessed October 5, 2009).
5
New communications technology makes it easier to serve up people as slivers of self, providing a sense that to get what you need from others you have multiple and inexhaustible options. On the psychology that needs these “slivers,” see Paul H. Ornstein, ed.,
The Search for Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut (1950-1978)
, vol. 2 (New York: International Universities Press, 1978).
New communications technology makes it easier to serve up people as slivers of self, providing a sense that to get what you need from others you have multiple and inexhaustible options. On the psychology that needs these “slivers,” see Paul H. Ornstein, ed.,
The Search for Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut (1950-1978)
, vol. 2 (New York: International Universities Press, 1978).
6
David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney,
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character
(1950; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney,
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character
(1950; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
7
Orenstein,
The Search for Self.
For an earlier work, of a very different time, that linked cultural change and narcissistic personality style, see Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism
(New York: Norton, 1979). Lasch said that “pathology represents a heightened version of normality.” This formulation is helpful in thinking about the “normal” self in a tethered society and those who suffer more acutely from its discontents. From a psychodynamic perspective, we all suffer from the same things, some of us more acutely than others.
Orenstein,
The Search for Self.
For an earlier work, of a very different time, that linked cultural change and narcissistic personality style, see Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism
(New York: Norton, 1979). Lasch said that “pathology represents a heightened version of normality.” This formulation is helpful in thinking about the “normal” self in a tethered society and those who suffer more acutely from its discontents. From a psychodynamic perspective, we all suffer from the same things, some of us more acutely than others.
8
See Erik Erikson,
Identity and the Life Cycle
and
Childhood and Society
;
Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History
(New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1958).
See Erik Erikson,
Identity and the Life Cycle
and
Childhood and Society
;
Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History
(New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1958).
9
Robert Jay Lifton,
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation
(New York: Basic Books, 1993).
Robert Jay Lifton,
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation
(New York: Basic Books, 1993).
10
Lifton shared this story at a meeting of the Wellfleet Seminar in October 2009, an annual gathering that began as a forum for Erikson and his students as they turned their attention to psychohistory.
Lifton shared this story at a meeting of the Wellfleet Seminar in October 2009, an annual gathering that began as a forum for Erikson and his students as they turned their attention to psychohistory.
11
The performances of everyday life—playing the roles of father, mother, child, wife, husband, life partner, worker—also provide “a bit of stress.” There is room for considerable debate about how much online life really shares with our performances of self in “real life.” Some look to the sociology of “self-presentation” to argue that online and off, we are always onstage. Erving Goffman,
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959).
The performances of everyday life—playing the roles of father, mother, child, wife, husband, life partner, worker—also provide “a bit of stress.” There is room for considerable debate about how much online life really shares with our performances of self in “real life.” Some look to the sociology of “self-presentation” to argue that online and off, we are always onstage. Erving Goffman,
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959).
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