I watched Sherry Turkle’s TED talk the other night, and was captured by her insights into life and technology. She talked about how even though we are so closely connected through Facebook, texting, and emailing, we are still so alone. Below is my commentary on her talk.
Sherry explains that we let technology “take us places we don’t want to go.” Our devises in our pockets have a psychological effect on us that “not only change what we do, they change who we are.” Things that we used to believe to be odd (texting in meetings, class, dinner, etc.), now become the norm. I can’t remember the last time I went out for food without someone being on their phone. I’m always tempted to play ‘phone stack’ just to see if it’s possible. Our mobie devices are shaping the way we experience things And what are we doing on them when we’re with friends? Telling other people that we’re eating dinner WITH other people, but are you really? Sherry calls this “being together without being together.”
While this may seem trivial and just the new trend, Sherry believes this is setting us up for trouble in relating to others and relating to ourselves. Continue reading
The Ballast 