Carter 1 ! Delaney Carter Mr. Kistler English 1100 Composition 1 7 November 2014 Connected or Disconnected? Technology is always changing and over the years has advanced in some major ways. Not all these ways are necessarily good. Some people believe that technology is helping them, and in many ways it is, but it is also hurting them. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, discusses some of the ways she thinks technology is hurting us in a famous TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Talk. In this she gives multiple examples of how people are relying or even trusting technology more than other people. It is crazy to think this, but sadly it is so true. In Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk “Connected, but alone?” she uses pathos to persuade the audience that technology is actually disconnecting us instead of bringing us together. Sherry Turkle’s argument is simple. She believes that people think they are getting closer to one another by using technology, but really they have never been more alone. She provides three main pieces of evidence to support this idea. First, we put our attention wherever we want it to be, and she gives the example of people texting or shopping during important meetings or big events. She says that we are hiding from each other in this way. Second, we think we will always be heard if we are constantly texting or posting to social media websites. Finally, we believe we are never alone when we are online. Turkle does not think that we need to turn away from technology or our devices, we just need to rely less on them. This essay is to prove that she focused on using pathos to convince the audience of these ideas and why they are bad.

Carter 2 ! Sherry Turkle opens her TED Talk by mentioning that her college student daughter sent her a good luck text. Then she goes into her reasons for technology making us alone together, hiding from each other, and the goldilocks effect. After this she brings in her own daughter as an example of being alone together. I think she does this because most of her audience is probably parents rather than college students or younger. Using her daughter as an example puts the idea of their own children into their minds. Now whenever she brings up examples they crowd will not only think if they are doing this, but will also think of their children are. This is important because most parents are protective of their children and want the best for them. So if Sherry Turkle gets her point across that we need to rely less on technology to connect to one another, she will not only be reaching to the generation of parents that she is speaking to. She will also be speaking to the generation of those parent’s children. Another example Turkle uses pathos and children to get her audience to go along with what she is saying, is when she mentions an 18 year old boy that she had interviewed for her research. She tells her listeners that the boy only uses text to communicate, then she goes on to quote him “…someday, someday, but certainly not now, I would like to learn how to have a conversation…” Once again making the parents think of their kids. This example also shows the parents what their children think about technology and connections with one another. My parents would be embarrassed if I ever said that I did not know how to have an actual conversation, and I'm sure that is how most of the parents listening felt too. Sherry Turkle was smart for using children as examples because that is one thing that parents will always listen to. Not only does Turkle use children to grab at the audiences emotions, but she also uses examples with people that are closer to the age of the audience listening. She tells the audience

Carter 3 ! about a woman she has witnessed in a nursing home during her research. The elderly woman was suffering from a loss of her child and was looking to a robot seal to comfort her. As odd as this sounds, the woman actually thought the seal was listening to her and understanding what she was going through. Turkle is making the audience feel bad for this women. She is making her listeners think that this poor old woman has no one to talk, so she turns to technology for comfort. It sounds so bizarre, but it makes the audience feel terrible for her. They hope they are never in a situation where the only person they have to talk to for comfort is a robot seal. Turkle’s TED Talk was filmed about two years ago, but she mentions the feature on iPhones called Siri. Having Siri on my phone, I know how human like it actually is. Apple makers made it so you could talk and interact with “her”. Once again it is technology making use believe that it can understand us while it has never really lived and has no idea what we are going through. Turkle also uses an example of a man that is walking into work, but he feels like he does not have coworkers anymore. She tells the audience that the man explains to her, he does not speak to the people he works with because they are too busy with their emails. Then, he realizes that really he is the one that does not want to be interrupted because he is the one that is so caught up in his devices. Turkle using this example, of a man realizing that it is him that has changed for technology, proves to the audience they can do the same thing. She wants them to know that they can do something about it. This example also gives the listeners a situation that probably most of them witness everyday and a chance to change the technology take over. Sherry Turkle giving these examples of older generations makes it easier for the audience to relate to the points she is trying to get make.

Carter 4 ! Turkle’s biggest use of pathos on the audience is the idea of being alone. No one likes to be alone or feel lonely. Her main argument is we believe that technology is our solution for feeling this way. She says that we are afraid of intimacy; We do not want to be alone, but we are scared of friendship. Today, my generation looks at how many instagram or twitter followers a person has to judge how many friends they have. This is terrible to think that people actually judge one another for how many people follow them on social media. I will be honest, I always love seeing the notification saying that someone would like to follow me pop up on my phone. It makes me think that someone actually wants to know about what I am doing with my life. When all that person wants is a follow back so they can have that same feeling of being wanted. I do not consider these people, that probably could care less about what I am doing, to be my “freinds.” This is what technology has us think though. These are not real friendships, but technology says that if you do not have them then you are alone. But is being alone actually a bad thing? I think everyone needs to have some alone time to relax and escape from the craziness of the world. Now a days it is nearly impossible to actually be alone and away from everyone. The only way to do this is to turn off all your devices, but most people might have a heart attack if they did. So they choose to never be alone. Turkle brings up children again to make sure the parents are still paying attention. She states that “if we do not teach our children to be alone the will only know how to be lonely.” Here Turkle is saying that if the parents do not change their bad habits with technology, then it is going to transfer to their children. No parent wants their children to feel lonely, and Turkle uses this so parents will change their ways. Being alone is not a bad thing, but being lonely because of technology is.

Carter 5 ! This essay gives many examples of how Turkle used pathos to get her audience to believe that technology is really disconnecting us from one another. Technology has become such a important part our lives in today’s society. Technology can do tons of good, but it also has it downfalls. For example, technology has allowed multiple medical and scientific breakthroughs to happen in the last couple of years. It also has been able to connect families and friends from across the world. The down sides of technology is that it has started to consume everyone’s life a little too much. People sleep with their phones right next to them, and they can not go an hour without checking it for calls, text, and social media notifications. For teenagers, it has made having a real face to face conversation a challenge instead of something that is suppose to be natural. Technology has made us believe that life can be edited, when really it is suppose to be a be made up of beautiful mistakes.

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Author’s Notes -Things I need to improve on 1. Wordiness 2. Some parts felt like them didn't flow very well. 3. I’m not sure if my ideas were abstract enough. -Things that I did well 1. I really liked having the worksheet to help me.