Ted Talks Name:
Sherry Turkle: Connected, but Alone?

1. In her introduction, Sherry Turkle says, “I embody the central paradox…” What is the paradox she is referring to?
She loves getting texts, and at the same time she believes many people can get a problem by texting.

2. The speaker describes a change in her thinking from the last time she spoke at TED. At first, what did she expect would be the result of online communication?
She expected that knowledge learnt from virtual world or online communication can be used to live better lives in the real world.

3. What does she think about it now?
She believes that technology or online communication will take people to get worst lives in the real world instead of getting better lives.

4. What are some examples she gives of new odd or disturbing behavior with our devices? * People text or send e-mails during the meetings or presentations. * Students shop, text and go on Facebook during classes. * Parents text and do e-mails during breakfast and dinner while children complain that they didn’t get the attention from their parents. * Children deny each other by texting and playing their devices while they are together. * People text at funeral.

5. In what 2 ways are we “setting ourselves up for trouble” with these behaviors?
We set ourselves up for trouble in how we relate to each other and in how we relate to ourselves.
6. Why are people so attracted to texting and posting as opposed to having real conversation? In other words, what is the “Goldilocks Effect”, or what Turkle calls “the bottom line”?
People can edit or control the virtual conversation when they text, post, and e-mail, but people can’t do those things in having face-to-face conversation.

7. For Turkle, what are texts and tweets good for? What does she see as their limitations? What is the problem with this ?
Texts are suitable for gathering bits of information or sending the messages what we are thinking. However, they don’t work for learning and understanding each other. Having the real conversation builds self-reflection skill that is important for development of the children, but texts cannot.

8. What do many people tell Turkle that they want? What “painful truth” does she see in this wish?
People want Siri, the assistant program on Apple’s Iphone, to be their best friends who will listen to them more than real friends listen, and the feeling that there is no one listening to them creates the relationship between human and technology. Therefore, automatic listeners, such as Facebook and Twitter, are founded.

9. What are the three” gratifying fantasies” that our devices offer us? * We can put our attention whenever and wherever we want it to be. * We will always be heard. * We will never have to be alone.

10. What happens to us now when we are alone?
Now when people are alone, they will be anxious, panic, and fidget. They will reach for their devices in order to avoid being alone.

11. Explain what Turkle means by “I share, therefore, I am.” How is this different from our view of ourselves in the past?
It means people use technology to define themselves by sharing their thoughts and feelings. In the past, people expressed their feelings by calling and talking with each other. Today, if people want to have feelings, they will send messages.

12. What happens when we cannot have solitude?
We will turn to other people to feel less anxious or less alive, and use them in order to support our fragile sense. If we cannot to be alone, we are going to be more lonely.

13. What does Turkle want people to do? What are the steps she thinks we should take?
Turkle want people to talk each other and develop a more self-aware relationship. Therefore, she suggests several steps that people should take. The first step is starting thinking about the solitude as a good thing. Then people should create the space to have conversation at work and homes. Most importantly, we have to listen to each other even it is the boring information.

14. What do you think about Turkle’s ideas? Do some reflection on the topic and be ready to discuss this with reasons and examples from your own experience.
I strongly agree with Turkle’s ideas that people are afraid of having conversation because of online communication. It happened to me when I was working in Thailand. At first, I used email because I just wanted to check and edit the important information before I sent it to my boss or colleagues. We didn’t want to miss sending essential information so we tried to avoid having real conversation. Moreover, it could be an evidence to confirm that we already did the task.
However, when this process occurred again and again, I realized that I rarely had the real conversation with colleagues and my boss. I thought we were afraid of having conversation because we didn’t have time to think about what they asked, and we were afraid of answering something with incorrect information. Thus, we chose to use email or text in order to express your thought.
To solve this problem, we sent email about the topic that we wanted to talk first, and then created the meeting to have the real conversation. After that, we wrote what we discussed in the meeting and sent it to everyone in order to confirm the information.

Vocabulary/expressions
“We remove ourselves from our grief or from our reverie, and we go into our phones.”
“A fifty-year-old business man laments to me…”
“ An eighteen-year-old boy….says to me wistfully someday…”
“We sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We shortchange ourselves.”
“ I was caught off guard when Stephen Colbert asked me a profound question…”
“ Don’t all those little sips of online communication add up to one big gulp of real conversation?”
“Connecting in sips may work for gathering discreet bits of information…”
“For kids growing up, that skill is the bedrock of development.”
“..People get so used to being shortchanged out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they become almost willing to dispense with people altogether.”
“People experience pretend empathy as though it were the real thing.”
“I found it one of the most wrenching, complicated moments in my 15 years of work.”
“Technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable.”
“ That third idea….. is central to changing our psyches.”
“…but in the process, we set ourselves up to be isolated.”
“We’re smitten with technology.” “ It’s when we stumble, or hesitate, or lose our words that we reveal ourselves to each other.”
“Technology is making the bid to redefine human connection.”
“ …and then there’s technology---simpler, hopeful, optimistic, ever-young…it’s like calling in the cavalry..”