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

Turkle recalls a group of people they called “the cyborgs” at MIT in the 90s. These people were “a new kind of nomad, wandering in and out of the physical real” (151). At the time, their wearable technology and attachment to virtual space seems alien to the faculty, but Turkle points out that many of us live like this now, whether it be through social networking sites or alternate reality games like Second Life. Our real selves are blurring with our virtual selves.

Turkle considers the differences between her daughter’s experience studying abroad in Paris and her own: her daughter is a phone call away from her friends and life back in Boston. She laments the end of a time when one could experience someplace new completely untethered.

Pete is a middle-aged man in an unhappy marriage. He has a virtual wife in Second Life, which he claims helps his real-life marriage because it gives him an outlet to talk about the anxieties his real wife doesn’t want to hear about. He also claims that he feels most “himself” in the game.

Turkle turns a skeptical eye to the rise of multitasking as a skill—indeed the skill for working in the digital age.