Some notes from two of Sherry Turkle's works:
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.
and
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
These works are well worth reading in full.
This is just some points taken from those readings to be used in my class
Discussion on Sherry Turkle and her ideas about self, identity and technology
1. Some Discussions on
Sherry Turkle
Nick Reynolds
ICT and C21 Learning Communities
The University of Melbourne
2. Constructions and Reconstructions of
Self in Virtual Reality
What individuals alone can achieve is ‘raised to a higher power’ when
communicating with computers (in this case through MUDs)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.
3. Online Self
Julee – role plays her own relationship with her mother with positive
consequences. Turkle sees this as the opposite of how online games are
portrayed
“You are the character and you are not the character both at the same time,” “you
are who you pretend to be”
Peter’s learning of world politics, culture and economics developed through
MUDs
Anonymity, invisibility, multiplicity
4. Positive Outcomes
The computer as an ‘evocative object’ – promotes self
reflection and stimulates thought
Gender swapping and development of understanding and
empathy of the social construction of gender
Habitat as a representation of ‘real’ life
‘Virtual reality is not “real”, but it has a relationship to
the real. By being betwixt and between, it becomes a play
space for thinking about the real world’ (p. 165)
Compare with her discussion about the liminal nature of
neighbourhood spaces in Turkle (2008)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.
5. Virtual Relationships
Human interactions with Artificial Intelligence
Blade Runner
HAL 9000
Alien
The Turing Test
http://www.turinghub.com/
‘Watch for a nascent culture of virtual reality that underscores the
ways in which we construct gender and the self, the ways in which we
become what we play, argue about and build. And watch for a culture
that leaves new space for the idea that he or she who plays, and
builds might be doing so with a machine’ (p. 167)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.
6. Always-On/Always-On-You: The
tethered self
Connection to technology and availability – always communicating
electronically
Connectedness is essential and working technology must be close
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
7. Always-On/Always-On-You: The
tethered self
‘Increasingly what people want out of public spaces is that they offer a place
to be private with tethering technologies’, mad people talking, shouting,
gesturing, laughing to themselves – all tolerated as the norm now
‘neighbourhood spaces themselves become liminal, not entirely public, not
entirely private’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
8. Redefined presence
The act of using a mobile phone ‘transports’ the user ‘to the space of the new
ether, virtualised’
‘the rapid movements from physical to a multiplicity of digital selves’ described
through the metaphor of ‘cycling-through’
‘With cell technology, rapid cycling stabilises into a sense of continual co-presence’
(p. 122)
‘Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am psychologically tuned to the connections that
matter’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
9. Grammars of ‘transport’
A new set of signs that signify a person is ‘elsewhere’
Looking at their lap
Speaking into the air
Loss of focus
Shift of gaze
‘They are transported to the space of a new ether, virtualised’ (p. 123)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
10. New Grammars of communication
SMS – ‘It is hard to get too many words on the phone keyboard and there is
not cultural incentive to do so
Online, On my phone, On Facebook, On the Web – a suggestion of a ‘tethered
self’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
11. New connectedness
‘Ignoring those one is physically “with” to give priority to online others’
Sitting in international conferences checking email
Tweeting about conference speakers’ presentation
‘these conversations are as much about jockeying for professional position … as
they are about what is being said at the podium’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
12. Embodied Status
Remote connectedness enables you to work in exotic locations
Tethering to technology helps you ‘love your body’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
13. Community and ‘friends’
Size of one’s contact list important
How many friends or followers do you have?
‘we are wanted by those we know … the potential, as yet unknown friends
who wait for us in virtual places’
Being more attached to the site rather than to the acquaintances within it
‘The site becomes a transference object: the place where friendships come
from’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
14. Working on identity
‘We never “graduate” from working on identity; we simply work on it with
the materials we have at hand’
People aren’t tethered to their devices. They are tethered to the
gratifications offered by their online selves
Affection, conversation, new beginnings, vanit
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
15. Working on identity
‘More than the sum of their instrumental functions, tethering devices help to
constitute new subjectivities.
Powerful evocative objects for adults, they are even more intense and
compelling for adolescents, at that point in development when identity play
is at the centre of life’ (p. 125)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
16. Creating Personae
Avatars in games
Web pages
Facebook profiles
Playlists
Sharing bookmarks (delicious)
‘Multiple playlists reflect aspects of self. And once you have collected your own
music, you can make connections to people all over the world to whom you can
send your songs’ (p. 126)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
17. Inner History
Relationships to artifacts and the promise of connections
Removal of ability for single reflection
‘The anxiety that teens report when they are without their cell phones or their link
to the internet may not speak so much to missing the easy socialability with others
but of missing the self that is constituted in those relationships’ (p. 127)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
18. Validation
A mobile phone allows us to be always there, always connected
Validation of self is permanently available
At the moment of having a thought or feeling, one can have it validated
Or one may need to have it validated
It may need validation to become established
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
19. Self and reflection
Mobile phone culture, despite being a talk culture, is ‘not necessarily a
culture in which talk contributes to self-reflection’
Empathetic interchanges reduced ‘to the shorthand of emoticon emotions’
“who am I?” and “who are you?” reformatted for the small screen; flattened
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
20. The Tethered Adult
Watching life ‘scroll by’
Stress of responisibility to keep up with email
Always being behind
Taking the office with you – everywhere
Need for immediate response - even when a wise response requires reflective
time.
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
21. Taking time
Checking email, making/receiving phone calls
In a taxi
On a train
At the airport
No time for self
Continual partial attention
(always listening to a device)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
22. The monitored self
Foucault – citizens who do not need to be watched
We try to keep up with our lives as they are presented to us by a new
disciplining technology
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Think about Foucault’s notion of “governmentality”
23. Boundaries
Losing partners, parents, friends, children for a few seconds or a few minutes
to an alternative reality
‘We live and work with people whose commitment to our presence feels
increasingly tenuous because they are tethered to more important virtual
others’ (p. 131)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
24. Self shaped by technology
Our technology reflects and shapes our values
‘The self is calibrated on the basis of what the technology proposes, by what
it makes possible, by what it makes easy’
Yet we have created a communications culture that has decreased the time
available for us to sit and think interrupted
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Think about technology being “socially shaped and
socially shaping” (Raymond Williams in Buckingham,
2008).
25. Tethered to whom?
We respond to humans and to objects that represent them
We no longer demand that as a person we have another person as an
interlocutor
Call centres
Bill payments
Intuitive software
Games
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
26. The Future
Robot carers
Robot pets
Does the provision on AI carers/pets remove the need for human contact?
Relational artifacts are the latest trajectory of the tethered self
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
27. Relationships and Self
Relational artifacts represent their programmers but are given autonomy and
primitive psychologies
What is an authentic relationship with a machine?
What are machines doing to our relationships with people?
What is a relationship?
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press