Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC
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0:10 - 0:12Good afternoon.
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0:12 - 0:17When I first got to MIT in 1978 Michael Dertouzos,
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0:17 - 0:22who's the head of the laboratory for computer science held a meeting.
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0:22 - 0:26There was a several day retreat in Endicott House Conference center.
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0:26 - 0:29In which he assembled the greatest minds
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0:29 - 0:32in computer science really at the time
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0:32 - 0:37to figure out the question of what people
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0:37 - 0:40might want to do with what was then called
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0:40 - 0:42home computers.
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0:42 - 0:44The word personal computers really hadn't
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0:44 - 0:46come into the lexicon yet.
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0:46 - 0:48Now these were the first computers that
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0:48 - 0:50you didn't have to build.
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0:50 - 0:52These were the first computers that you
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0:52 - 0:53could actually buy.
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0:53 - 0:56And these great computer scientists got together
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0:56 - 0:58and I was invited to the meeting
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0:58 - 1:01because I had begun my studies of computers and people.
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1:01 - 1:04They got together and they kind of gave it their best shot.
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1:04 - 1:08Somebody suggested the children might wanna learn to program,
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1:08 - 1:11listen to respectfully, maybe.
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1:11 - 1:14Somebody suggested that we would want to put our
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1:14 - 1:19address books on computers and people laughed,
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1:19 - 1:24and said well actually paper and pencil, little books paper was perfect for that
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1:24 - 1:26because most people didn't have a data base,
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1:26 - 1:29they had a couple of names and addresses so that didn't make a lot of sense.
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1:31 - 1:36Some people suggested well a calendar and actually people said well no,
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1:36 - 1:38I don't like using the computer for my calendar.
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1:38 - 1:42I really find the little Filofax is much better.
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1:42 - 1:44You can flip through it's much more practical.
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1:44 - 1:49I tell this story because I think it's very important to know,
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1:49 - 1:54to remember that really not that long ago,
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1:54 - 2:01we were trying to figure out how we would keep computers busy.
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2:01 - 2:08And you know, now we know that once we networked with each other.
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2:08 - 2:13Once computers were our portal to being with each other,
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2:13 - 2:18we really don't have to worry about keeping computers busy.
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2:18 - 2:21They keep us busy.
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2:21 - 2:26It's kind of as though we are their killer app.
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2:26 - 2:29So how does that work?
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2:29 - 2:33We're on our email, our games, our virtual worlds.
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2:33 - 2:39We text each other at family dinners, while we jog, while we drive,
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2:39 - 2:42we take our lives into our hands to do that
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2:42 - 2:45even with our kids in the back seat of the car.
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2:45 - 2:48We text each other at funerals,
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2:48 - 2:52we go to the park and we push swings with one hand
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2:52 - 2:56and we scroll through our messages with each other.
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2:56 - 3:00Lot of my research is observing families and you know, this is what I see.
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3:00 - 3:05The children who I interview say that their parents read them Harry Potter again.
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3:05 - 3:10With their right hand reading the book and the left hand scrolling through
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3:10 - 3:13the messages on the Blackberry.
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3:13 - 3:17Children describe that moment at school pickup.
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3:17 - 3:20They'll never tell you that they care but they describe that moment
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3:20 - 3:26where they come out of school you know looking for that moment of eye contact
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3:26 - 3:29and instead of that moment of eye contact with the parent
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3:29 - 3:33who after all had shown up at school pickup
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3:33 - 3:42that parent is looking at the iPhone looking at the smartphone and is reading mail.
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3:43 - 3:49So from the moment this generation of children met technology,
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3:49 - 3:55it was a competition and now they've grown up and today's teenagers,
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3:55 - 4:04this generation of children who've grown up with technology being the competition,
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4:04 - 4:10they now have their turn to live in a culture of distraction.
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4:10 - 4:12And what do they tell me?
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4:12 - 4:14They tell me they sleep with their cell phones.
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4:14 - 4:17They begin by saying, well I use it as an alarm clock,
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4:17 - 4:19and then they come clean and they say well actually
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4:19 - 4:22it's not just because I use it as an alarm clock.
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4:22 - 4:26They want to sleep with it just in case they get a message or they want to communicate
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4:26 - 4:30and then they say even when their phones are put away --
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4:30 - 4:34let's say relegated to their school locker --
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4:34 - 4:37they know when they have a message or a call,
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4:37 - 4:43they feel that, they can tell at long distance that they have a message or a call
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4:43 - 4:45they say they can just sense it.
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4:45 - 4:51Indeed adults as well as teens report that they feel their phones vibrating.
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4:51 - 4:54Even when they are not.
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4:54 - 4:58This is a well known phenomenon, it's called the phantom ring.
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4:58 - 5:00It's been reported all over.
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5:00 - 5:03When you take our phones away from us,
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5:03 - 5:09we become anxious, we become impossible, really.
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5:09 - 5:15Modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us.
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5:15 - 5:20So what is the arc of the story that I want to tell?
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5:20 - 5:24Only fifteen years ago looking at the early internet,
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5:24 - 5:28I felt an incredible sense of optimism.
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5:28 - 5:31I saw a place for identity experimentation
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5:31 - 5:34I called it an identity workshop,
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5:34 - 5:41for trying out aspects of self that were hard to experiment with in the physical real
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5:41 - 5:46and all of this happens and all of this is still wondrous.
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5:46 - 5:51But what I didn't see coming, and I like to tell my students
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5:51 - 5:53call me not prescient.
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5:53 - 5:58What I didn't see coming and what we have now is that
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5:58 - 6:06mobile connectivity, that world of devices always on and always on us,
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6:06 - 6:13would mean that we would be able basically to bail out of the physical real at anytime,
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6:13 - 6:20to go to all of the other places and spaces that we have available to us
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6:20 - 6:22and that we would want to.
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6:22 - 6:26One man I interviewed, who plays with his kids in the park
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6:26 - 6:32while he talks to his virtual mistress on iPhone, calls it the life mix.
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6:32 - 6:35So I guess you could say that what I'm talking about
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6:35 - 6:38are the perils of going from multitasking
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6:38 - 6:43to multi-lifing, the perils of the life mix.
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6:43 - 6:48Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.
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6:48 - 6:53And these days there is no coyness about its aspiration
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6:53 - 6:58to substitute life on the screen for the other kind.
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6:58 - 7:09Technology is seductive when its affordences meet our human vulnerabilities.
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7:09 - 7:15And it turns our we are very vulnerable indeed.
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7:15 - 7:19We are lonely but fearful of intimacy.
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7:19 - 7:23Connectivity offers for many of us,
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7:23 - 7:29the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
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7:29 - 7:38We can't get enough of each other -- if we can have each other at a distance
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7:38 - 7:41in amounts that we can control.
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7:41 - 7:48Think of Goldilocks, not too close, not too far, just right.
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7:48 - 7:53Connection made to measure, that's the new promise.
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7:53 - 8:02The ability to hide from each other even as we are continually connected to each other.
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8:02 - 8:07To put it too simply, we would rather text than talk.
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8:07 - 8:12Online connections bring so many bounties.
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8:12 - 8:18But our lives of continual connection also leave us vulnerable.
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8:18 - 8:22Often we are too busy communicating to think.
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8:22 - 8:27Too busy communicating to create,
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8:27 - 8:31too busy communicating to really connect
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8:31 - 8:37with the people we're with in the ways that would really count.
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8:37 - 8:41In continual contact, we're alone together.
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8:41 - 8:48To paraphrase Thoreau, where
do we live and what do we live for -
8:48 - 8:50in our new tethered lives
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8:50 - 8:58or in other words, what do we have,
now that we have what we say we want, -
8:58 - 9:04now that we have what technology makes easy?
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9:04 - 9:09In corporations, among circles of teenage and adult friends,
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9:09 - 9:15within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather text
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9:15 - 9:20or send an email than talk face to face.
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9:20 - 9:24Some who say I live my life on my blackberry,
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9:24 - 9:28are forthright about avoiding real-time commitment of a phone call.
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9:28 - 9:35When you text, one young man says, you have more time to think about what you're writing
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9:35 - 9:38on the telephone too much might show.
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9:38 - 9:45Here we use technology to dial down human contact and there's that Goldilocks thing.
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9:45 - 9:49To titrate it's nature and extent.
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9:49 - 9:58People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay.
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9:58 - 10:00And we confront a paradox.
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10:00 - 10:04We insist that our world is increasingly complex
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10:04 - 10:06yet we've created a communication's culture
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10:06 - 10:11that has decreased the time available for us to sit and think,
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10:11 - 10:16uninterrupted we've ramp up the volume and velocity of communication
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10:16 - 10:19but we start to expect fast answers.
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10:19 - 10:23And in order to get them we ask each other simpler questions,
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10:23 - 10:26we start to dumb down our communication,
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10:26 - 10:28even on the most important matters.
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10:28 - 10:30Shakespeare might have said,
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10:30 - 10:35we are consumed with that which we are nourished by.
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10:35 - 10:39This flood of connection affects the development of the self in many ways,
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10:39 - 10:41here I am just going to mention one of them.
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10:41 - 10:45Let's call it, I share therefore I am.
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10:45 - 10:55For so many I have studied, things go from I have a feeling, I want to make a call,
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10:55 - 11:01to I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text.
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11:01 - 11:09In other words the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it.
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11:09 - 11:17More than this, what is not being cultivated is the ability to be alone.
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11:17 - 11:23To gather oneself, there is a great psychological truth.
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11:23 - 11:31If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely.
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11:31 - 11:39For adult and child having gotten into the habit of constant connection,
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11:39 - 11:47we risk losing our capacity for the kind of solitude that energizes and that restores.
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11:47 - 11:50So let me share some final thoughts.
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11:50 - 11:55First about the metaphor of addiction, which we're too apt to use.
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11:55 - 12:01And second, about the moment we're at and the promise it offers.
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12:01 - 12:03First, addiction.
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12:03 - 12:06People are compelled by that little red light on the blackberry
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12:06 - 12:10that tells them a message is waiting.
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12:10 - 12:11I ask them why,
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12:11 - 12:16and they talk about their mobile device as the place for hope in their life.
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12:16 - 12:19The place where something new will come to them.
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12:19 - 12:22The place where loneliness can be defeated.
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12:22 - 12:27They say things like, the phone is where the sweetness is.
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12:27 - 12:33We're vulnerable to the constant feelings of connection that technology offers.
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12:33 - 12:36We should focus on this vulnerability
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12:36 - 12:40because we can work on getting less vulnerable.
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12:40 - 12:45However apt, we can ill afford the metaphor of addiction.
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12:45 - 12:49Because if you're addicted you have only one solution,
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12:49 - 12:52you have to get rid of that substance.
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12:52 - 12:56And we know that we are not going to get rid of the internet,
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12:56 - 13:00we are not going to get rid of social networking.
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13:00 - 13:04We will not go cold turkey or forbid cellphones to our children.
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13:04 - 13:10These technologies are our current partners in the human adventure.
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13:10 - 13:14The notion of addiction with this one solution that we know we won't take,
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13:14 - 13:18makes us feel hopeless and passive.
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13:18 - 13:24We sense something amiss and we're at a moment of opportunity.
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13:24 - 13:28Every technology provides an opportunity to ask,
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13:28 - 13:32does it serve our human purposes?
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13:32 - 13:38A question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are.
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13:38 - 13:41Just because we grew up with the internet,
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13:41 - 13:45we assume that the internet is all grown up.
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13:45 - 13:51We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity.
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13:51 - 13:54That the way we live now with the internet
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13:54 - 13:57is how we're going to live with it in the future.
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13:57 - 13:59And that's not true.
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13:59 - 14:03With the internet, it is very early days.
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14:03 - 14:08It is time to make the corrections and one hopeful place
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14:08 - 14:14is to restart some conversations we allowed to get derailed.
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14:14 - 14:16To take as only one example,
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14:16 - 14:21we close down conversations and much to our detriment.
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14:21 - 14:25By getting into performance mode on the network
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14:25 - 14:28in both our personal and our professional lives.
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14:28 - 14:34Personally there's been a tendency to use social networking to perform an ideal self.
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14:34 - 14:39Many people tell me they don't like to show flaws and vulnerabilities
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14:39 - 14:42or share bad news online with friends.
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14:42 - 14:47They say things like, it just doesn't seem like the place to talk about problems.
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14:47 - 14:51Not even, as one woman put it, the death of my dog.
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14:51 - 14:54So certainly not about more serious problems.
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14:54 - 14:56So the more time we spend online,
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14:56 - 14:59the more we keep a lot of things to ourselves.
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14:59 - 15:05Even as we think we're updating our status and updating our status,
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15:05 - 15:07and sharing ourselves with the world.
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15:07 - 15:11But very often we're sharing what makes us look good.
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15:11 - 15:14We're sharing what's easy to share.
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15:14 - 15:18Professionally, we also perform in our emails and memos at work.
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15:18 - 15:21Business people, lawyers, consultants tell me.
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15:21 - 15:26That in their work environments, they don't want to leave an electronic trace,
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15:26 - 15:30of asking for help or admitting failures and frustrations.
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15:30 - 15:32So we make it harder to fix problems,
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15:32 - 15:35we make it harder to be mentored.
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15:35 - 15:38So we cut off conversations in our friendships,
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15:38 - 15:42and we cut off conversations in our professional life
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15:42 - 15:45that would improve our performance on the job.
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15:45 - 15:51The path ahead is challenging but clear for both institutions and individuals,
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15:51 - 15:53for both love and money,
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15:53 - 16:00the next task for all of us is to restart those necessary conversations.
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16:00 - 16:07Instead of casual Fridays, we should all be asking for conversational Thursdays.
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16:07 - 16:10And that won't be a bad thing at all.
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16:10 - 16:13Reclaiming conversation, that's the next frontier.
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16:13 - 16:14Thank you.
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16:14 - 16:16(Applause)
- Title:
- Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC
- Description:
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Sherry Turkle talks about why we expect more from technology and less from each other.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 16:24
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Paola B commented on English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ivana Korom approved English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ido Dekkers accepted English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ido Dekkers edited English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC | ||
Ido Dekkers edited English subtitles for Alone Together - Sherry Turkle at TEDxUIUC |