My Thoughts On Alone Together
Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology And Less From Each Other is a thought-provoking book by Sherry Turkle that explores how technology has changed how we interact with each other and how that can lead to us being isolated in a connected world. Turkle doesn’t advocate going back to a time before modern technology took hold, instead, she intends to illustrate how technology has become entwined in almost every interaction in our lives and how this has affected us. Below are the key ideas I took from reading.
Technology exploits vulnerabilities
Turkle states that technology is seductive when it meets the vulnerabilities that we all share. Instances of this include something as simple as Tamagotchi.
Tamagotchi is just a simple computer with a display that shows a little pixelated creature that reacts deterministically based on inputs. Yet something so trivial took the world by storm in the ’90s and they still sell like hotcakes today, as we project strongly onto Tamagotchi our own emotions. We want to be loved and having a little creature that claims to love us exploits this vulnerability.
A Tamagotchi doesn’t love you straight away, you have to earn it by treating it well. Making sure it gets enough food, naps, and attention is required in order for your Tamagotchi, and if you don’t give it enough care your Tamagotchi will die. This consequence keeps users engaged in caring for their Tamagotchi as they know that this creature is dependent on them for their wellbeing. When a Tamagotchi dies it feels no pain, the processor resets and a new one takes its place. However for some Tamagotchi users when their creature dies they feel incredibly guilty and they refuse to that Tamagotchi device again as they believe it’s not the same Tamagotchi they once had, even though it has no consciousness we project these attributes onto these creatures. That’s why Tamagotchi’s are so popular among children and provokes nostalgia amongst adults.
Tamagotchi’s are devices that pander to children, however, there are others that appeal to broader age groups such as AIBO’s. These are robotic dogs like the one in the picture. AIBO expresses emotion via its gestures and LED lights, it never explicitly states it’s emotional state, humans interpret it. AIBO’s are being introduced into rest homes for older people to give something to care for. AIBO’s don't come with the complications that real pets do, but they still come with most of the actions of the real pet. People become emotionally attached to AIBO perceiving that the robotic dog is able to empathize with them. However, this is false as a robot has no capacity for genuine emotion as it doesn’t experience the human lifecycle. Despite this AIBO’s are being used to fill a void for human support in older people, as younger people in their family either aren’t willing or able to give the support that’s required for an older person.
People will try to rationalize the use of AIBO by thinking that it’s better than nothing and it would help them fill a void of loneliness. However they know that this robot doesn’t actually care about them, and they feel guilty about resorting to technology to solve an emotional dependency problem. Robots will not solve social isolation as they don’t share the human experience and can’t relate to us, the best we can do is make robots look like they do. If we choose to solve our parent’s problems with a technology that doesn’t care for us, would we want when we are eventually their age? I’m willing to bet for most us the answer would be no.
The pressure of connection
Being constantly connected is great for being able to communicate with your friends at ease. I personally love being able to send dank memes out to my mates in order to brighten their day. However being connected also comes with the pressure of having to respond when someone messages you, as they know that you have received the message, and often also if you’ve read it. It creates a vicious cycle where people feel they have to respond, sending out messages to people who have to respond and so on. It can turn into a massive anxiety snowball if it gets bad enough and dilutes your interactions with others.
Disconnection induces anxiety in people who are dependent on the internet for their interactions. They feel like they’re missing out and they’re also fearful of what their friends think of them for not replying to their messages. This ties into the vulnerabilities we were discussing earlier, we want to be connected to each other yet the technology results in our isolation.
Texting doesn’t have the same nuance and ambience as an actual conversation, and it allows us to distance ourselves from others due to the asynchronous nature of messaging. In contrast calling is a synchronous technology that demands the attention of both participants, and this can be confronting for users which is why some people hate calling people, as it requires talking to someone in the moment. Email is similar to texting except that it’s often associated with work or task management, so people talk about “doing email”. Rather the email does you, you’re the one using the technology as it wears you down bit by bit, demanding your attention and energy that you could spend doing other things.
Online Avatars
Turkle conducted a series of interviews with people who had online Avatars that deviated strongly from their real world interactions. One person who was married in real life also had a wife online on Second Life. He takes his marriage online very seriously and spends many hours invested in his interactions with his virtual wife rather than his actual one. He justifies this as his avatar being part of his “life mix” and because his marriage is to a virtual wife he isn’t cheating on his real wife. Other interviewees talked about they had created their avatars to wear more revealing clothes than they would normally wear and give them personalities that they feel safe exploring online. This all stems from presentation anxiety as people feel they are being judged by others and they create Avatars often embodying the characteristics that they wish they had in real life.
Dependence
Turkle interviews a man who is absolutely obsessed with video games, in particular Quake. He neglects all the responsibilities of his life and spends a reckless amount of time engorged in the first person shooter world. He claims that he only really feels happy when he is playing Quake and finds the rest of his life unbearable in comparison. This man is showing strong symptoms of video game addiction, however addiction is an unhelpful metaphor in order to assess our relationship with technology. Addiction implies that there isn’t really much we can do about it, it’s just the way we are wired. Turkle believes that we can have a healthier relationship with technology if we exercise awareness about the technology we use and the volume of which we are engaged in.
For me I’ve found that taking stock of how I use technology has been helpful in deciding what social media platforms I want use and also how often I use technology. In particular Android Digital Wellness and Screentime for iOS are helpful in determining how often you use your devices. I’ve also discovered that learning new skills or spending regular time with friends and family has made me spend less time on my phone, which I think is a good thing. Of course like any other human I go through phases where I’m a digital outcast and then I’m staying up until midnight on my Nintendo Switch.
Conclusion
Admittedly the first half of this book was a slog to get through, overall I found it very enjoyable and insightful. Alone Together hasn’t changed my actions in anyway but I feel that it has made me more aware of how I’m using technology. It also compliments The Shallows incredibly well which I’ve also done a blog post for. It will be interesting to see the impact of analytics provided by Google and Apple whether that will encourage people to reduce their screen time, which is incredibly difficult given that there are screens everywhere these days, they seem impossible to escape from. I can definitely recommend Alone Together, particularly if you’re looking at more dated instances of technology as the lessons from Alone Together are still pervasive to this day.
