Alone Together - Running Commentary

One of the best things about Alone Together is that Judy sang a song by the same name. You can hear it here, from her huge, amazing night at Carnegie Hall.

I'm reading the book as part of a book group and work assignment. The book's full title is Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other and it is written by Sherry Turkle. She's no relation to Studs Terkel nor, to my knowledge anyway, was she in inspiration for the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons song. Contrary to popular belief, she is no relation to Cher, either.

I'm not that far along in the book but already it is making me think and that's a great quality in a book!

I'm really looking forward to talking to others about the book already. Please note that is just a running commentary...not a full review...I'm not done reading it, so I don't know where the author ends up on a lot of the issues.

So far though, she seems to be more anti-technology than pro-technology. Now I know, I know...I am sure she isn't either one. She's probably one of those folks who says, "Technology is neither good nor bad, it is neutral. It is what people DO with technology that helps or hurts." Yeah, yeah. We hear that all the time. I got it. I'm just saying, so far, she has a lot more negative things to say about, okay, the way we use technology than positive. The book reminds me a bit of Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch: rewiring the world from Edison to Google, which I read before I started this blog and which I really enjoyed. I still think a lot about his points and I share them a lot when in discussions about technology.

She starts out talking about a time when she was asked to comment on robots having relationships with people for Scientific American magazine. She was asked to comment on David Levy's book Love and Sex with Robots and she said that while robots are going to be really awesome and help people in huge ways, there will never be, nor their should be love and relationships with robots, because well, she believes it is simply not possible.

More to come!