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Reclaiming Conversation: The Power Of Talk In A Digital Age, Sherry Turkle, New York: Penguin Press, 2015, 436 pp.
Reviewed by Claire Beth Steinberger
Even Silicon Valley parents who work for social media companies tell me that they send their children to technology-free schools in the hope that this will give their children greater emotional and intellectual range, (p.55)
Sherry Turkle's "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age" is her latest, and possibly most powerful analysis of the postmodern tumble into disembodied cyberspace attachment. As a consummate crusader, Turkle builds her case in an extensive (436-page) study. She does an excellent job of illustrating how easy it is for human beings to adapt to and become dependent on technology-based information transmission. Her argument points to the steep costs of a cyber-cultural metamorphosis that challenges all aspects of human development, including the interface of biological, emotional and cognitive lines.
"ONE TO THREE CHAIRS"
Reclaiming Conversation is organized around the metaphor of "one to three chairs". Turkle adapts this from the esteemed 19th century philosopher, Henry David Thoreau ( Walden Pond, 1845), whose metaphoric language defines the human need for contact in an expansive "self-to-communal" matrix: "one-chair" signifies the need for quiet time and solitude, "twochairs" for intimate relationship (e.g., family, friendship and romance) and "three-chairs" for communal or "public square" investment (e.g., education, work, politics). A post-modern (post-Thoreau) "fourth chair" offers an uncanny rendering of a place where machines take over human roles. In one example, a sixteen-year old girl considers the idea of connecting to a Siri-other. She writes, "There are some people who have tried to make friends...but, they've fallen through so badly that they give up. So when they hear this idea about robots being made into companions, well, it's not going to be like a human and have its own mind to walk away or ever leave you or anything like that" (p. 337).
WHO DO WE BECOME?
Turkle asks the question, "Who do we become when we talk to machines?" Drawing from hundreds of cross-cultural studies and individual and group interviews, Reclaiming Conversation suggests that the increasing reliance on digital communication eats at the core of what it means to be human. Her homage to solitude points...