Alone Together - Part One

Alone Together is certainly a sharp contrast from what he have been reading and discussing in the previous classes.  Turkle begins the text by presenting the significant movement that technology has made in people’s lives.  It is very interesting to me that she prefaces the points she is about to make with her own skepticism of the emotional role that robots can play.  As she goes to discuss some of the interviews, I had to read several times just to make sure I was actually reading them correctly.  Some of them that stood out:

Anne’s willingness to substitute a well-made, agreeable robot for her actual boyfriend (page 9).

A thirty year old man saying, “I’d rather talk to a robot.  Friends can be exhausting.  The robot will always be there for me.  And whenever I’m done, I can walk away (page 10).”

“Inventor Unveils $7000 Talking Sex Robot (page 25).”

When I first read through these quotes I just could not see where or how society could ever possibly evolve into this.  To me, it would be more depressing to have a robot as a companion than an actual human.  The robot would serve as a reminder that I did not have real friends and that I was indeed alone.  I do understand the “somebody’s home” feeling that Turkle describes in the introduction, and I have that feeling quite often just because of the amount of technology around me.  Nearly every store, restaurant, or place of service has a camera system set up to monitor its environment, so I think it is somewhat normal to feel like you are not alone. 

As I read further into the book, I began to understand how that substitution could eventually happen.  Social media platforms such as Facebook and MySpace have laid a foundation for people to slightly alter the way that others perceive them, and possibly the way they see themselves.  I think that gaming, forums, and other online communities can help people explore themselves and in a way become someone that they otherwise could not.  This leads to the opening of one’s imagination, and I can see how that could progress into enjoying a companion regardless of its form.  It was really interesting to see how receptive people actually are viewing a robot as a companion and how many people that were asked would actually prefer it.

I like that Turkle then presented ideas supporting why this may be the case.  People view the robots as companions without the downsides that human interaction has.  They do not have to worry about being hurt or the relationship ending, but are able to experience the beneficial emotions that a companion can provide such as attention and love.  I was on board with this idea until the two are compared directly in the text.  Later in the chapter, the My Real Baby experiment will go down as one of the more uncomfortable things that I can remember reading.  Turkle painted a very vivid picture and did a tremendous job explaining the emotions that were in the room during the interaction between Edna and Amy.  The fact that a robot was able to overpower an actual child for an adult’s care and attention completely floored me.  I know that people become increasingly lonely as they become older, and maybe the My Real Baby gave Edna a sense of ownership that she could not have with Amy since it was not her actual child.  No one had ownership of the doll, and this allowed Edna to take it upon herself to care for it.  As Turkle continued describing the situation, I could almost feel Edna snap out of it and return her attention back to the “real world.” 

Although I enjoyed reading this, I had a slight uncomfortable feeling the entire time that I don’t think I have ever had reading a book.  I kept inserting people that I know into the stories and experiments that Turkle conducted, and I had a very clear mental picture of each situation.  I also think it is significant that she involved every age group and really covered every type of person that could be in different emotional places in their lives.  If a particular age was not targeted in an experiment or study, she still had very honest interviews from them.  She points out a lot of potentially negative results from her research and at first I got the feeling that she thought we as a society are moving in the wrong direction.  But I noticed that she stopped every study as someone was beginning to become too attached or too involved.  She would stop them and try to understand the emotions that were taking place so that we can understand how a robot can bring about such intense emotion.  After noticing this toward the end of the section, I think she appreciates technology and the contributions it can make in our lives, but it has evolved so quickly that we need to be able to evaluate it to make sure we are applying it in the right ways.