Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (excerpts) Read Chapter 6, 8, 9, and conclusion

Is Turkle just a modern Wendell Berry?  Do you think robots for personal care and our use of cell phones etc. represent something fundamentally new or are they just continuations of previous trends going on in our society. Are caring robots something that are good or do they show something wrong about our society? How does Turkle think that our new communications devices are changing our sense of identity and our relations with other people? From your experience is she right? What does Turkle mean when she says that computers keep us busy? Is this a case of technological determinism? What would Lewis Mumford say about this? Do you think technology gets what it wants? (p. 282) What is realtechnik? What kind of corrections do you think Turkle thinks we should make in our technological lives? What do you think? Can we make them?