-
Essay / How Technology Affects Human Behavior According to The Book Alone Together
As we use technology more and more, we expect our social lives to become more active. We expect many aspects of our lives to improve and we believe that the very relationship between us and technology is the solution to this desire for improvement. Sherry Turkle in the book Alone Together challenges this expectation. She talks about emotional connections to inanimate objects, robots, artificial intelligence, intimacy and the illusion of socialization. In the first part of the book, you feel a pang of nostalgia when the author talks about toys like tamagotchis and furbies. We studied the “grief” of children after the “death” of one of their toys. Children have the power to make these toys into living beings, and to us, they are just a piece of metal, wire and plastic. Children bond with toys that aren't necessarily healthy for them. Toys like My Real Baby advertise that they will improve your child's social life when in reality it just gives them something to do. We observe the elderly in Japan and examine their need for robotic caregivers, and how the lack of emotional and human connection could radically change our future. In the second part of the book we look at something more relevant and personal. We look at how connectivity is changing our lives. Social media and the online world require you to create an identity. Most of the time, this identity is different from yours. This book is one of the most interesting books I have read in my life. In the remainder of my essay, I will review it so you can decide for yourself whether it is worth reading. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Alone Together was written to first give context to emotional attachment to technology, and then to show how it is part of our daily reality. The author of this book is Sherry Turkle. Sherry Turkle is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She wrote Alone Together to address the rapidly growing movement toward technology and how it is changing our behavior. Her life is connected to the content of this book because before writing the book Alone Together, she wrote a book called Life on the Screen which examined a study on how people use computers. Her thoughts evolved from computers to technology as a whole, and that's why she wrote this book. The audience for this book is aimed at everyone, this is evident because the book does not speak in a tone that would be more satisfying to a younger or older audience. There is an opinionated tone to the book but it is more descriptive, it satisfies everyone. There are also photos of people on the cover of the book, from different backgrounds and age groups. At the beginning of the book, I watch the children “grieve” the loss of their toy. They have formed emotional attachments to these toys and become sad when they die. We're looking at robots like AIBO, a robot dog that interacts with people. There is one caveat to this robot, and that is that it requires no attention. The relationship between AIBO and a child can only make the child think about himself. We examine how artificial intelligence is being developed to meet the needs of Japan's aging population. Although robots could help in many ways, some fear that the lack of human contact could harm their lives and the future of our world. In the second part of the book,..