Alone Together

This week assignment was to watch a video where Sherry Turkle talked about how technology has changed our social habits. Sherry Turkle - Alone Together

In the video Sherry was talking about how nowadays people are “alone together”, for example how people are spending time together, but not really concentrating on each other because they are holding their phones and having other conversations or reading something interesting, or playing something trough the internet.

When you’re having a conversation trough text-messages or e-mails, it’s easier to control what you say or when you response. You have more time to think about your answer and for some people it’s easier to express yourself by writing than by talking.

Nowadays people are used to that they can use their phone when they’re having a “boring moment” like waiting for something, or they can skip a boring part of a conversation by consecrating on their phone applications.  Some people easily ask others to wait a minute if they are about to say something, if they’re just reading or writing something from their phone.  Some of our group members admitted to do the same.

Before it was very rude to have a phone in your hand for example in work, meeting or at lecture, but nowadays is really common.  Sherry was talking in the video how she doesn’t want to bother her co-workers if they’re concentrated on their phones or laptops, because she thinks that they are doing something important, but at the same time she doesn’t want to be disturbed either.

One of our group members had a example how a little girl who is used to talk with text messages, answered to a letter in a simply yes or no, and didn’t realize that the letters receiver does not know in which questions is she answering to.

Sherry is talking about the technology partly negatively and party positively, she is saying that we need to concentrate more on each others “in real life” than trough the internet. At the same time she’s really happy about a text message that her daughter sent her earlier. People still need to remember that texting is not same as real face to face conversation, so many little things like body language and tone of voice is missing. Emojis does not replace the human face.

We think that the most important message that Sherry is talking is that we need to learn how to use technology to make more good than bad, like make our relationships stronger.  We need to find a golden mean between technological and real life communication and let those support each others, not just focus one or the other.  

M.T