Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

Technology, author Sherry Turkle claims, is the “architect of our intimacies” (1). Everything from the virtual utopia of Second Life to Zhu Zhu pet hamsters is presented to us as artificial improvements of the real thing. It is seductive. But there is a downside to the illusion, a claim she makes by citing a story of a girl who texts her friend to get her attention even though they’re in the same house. The book asks “how we got to this place and whether we are content to be here” (2).

At the New York Museum of Natural History, Turkle’s young daughter Rebecca comments that they should’ve used robots for the Galápagos turtles rather than imprisoning living creatures. Many other kids agree. This unsettles Turkle. So does a book by artificial intelligence expert David Levy on the potential of romantic companionship with robots. She is worried that interacting with an inanimate object as if it were alive could leave us “diminished.”

An encounter where a Scientific American reporter accuses Turkle of “species chauvinism” for reacting negatively to the idea of humans marrying machines shakes her.