So don't we have people for that?

With the author's research presented, it is difficult to determine her opinion on this new technology. While some of the robots, like PARO, serve a purpose in helping medical patients, while others, like My Real Baby require a lot of attention and time for no other function except for entertainment. All of her examples lead towards this sci-fi world depicting humans as solely functioning because of their electronics, depending on them to talk to each other, organize their schedules, etc. but then where do the people come in? Why aren't they the ones performing these tasks? According to Greg Downey's Making Media Work, what people tend to forget is the "wide range of human 'information labor' enabling and constraining the constant circulation of information," or in other words, the "behind the scenes work." So while we may think it is just a machine at our fingertips, there are really hundreds, if not thousands, of people supplying that information. Turkle focuses her studies on our interactions with technology, but doesn't examine if people understand where their gadgets come from, who made them, and who has access to the information they feed it.

For more information on information labor, visit Downey's site at:
http://gdowney.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/making-media-work-within-knowledge-infrastructures/

Part 2: Networked: In Intimacy, New Solitudes

In part two of the book, Turkle examines how we have grown to become dependent on technology as a means of communication. In an interview with a teenage girl, the author found the cell phone is no longer just a tool, but now “the phone is her friend and that friends take on identities through her phone” (176). As discussed by Craig Watkins in the chapter of his book The Young and the Digital, technological advancements allow us to have access to “anywhere, anytime technology,” keeping us glued to our devices, constantly in contact with the virtual world around us (Watkins). This increased availability of having these resources has lead to a sense of inability to disconnect. One woman who Turkle interviewed described how she wanted to take a vacation from work to completely disconnect, against her bosses wishes, but couldn’t find a good enough reason to tell  everyone she wouldn’t be able to be contacted because nearly every destination offers wifi or cell service. Others felt that even being asked “to disconnect even momentarily from the cast swirl of content and comrades they engage throughout the day generates anxiety, discomfort, and cultural alienation.” (Watkins). 

For more information from Watkin, the book can be purchased by visiting this link"
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/young-and-the-digital-s-craig-watkins/1100313727

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Part 1: The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies

In the first half of the book, the author’s focus is on robots and people’s interactions with them at different ages, studying how their role in our society and their uses have changed over the last fifteen years. Some of her experiments included bringing robot toys to schools, sending them home with the children, watching them interact with the more advanced communicable robots at MIT, as well as bringing some of these same robots to elderly individuals to observe their behavior and attitudes towards the robots.

When asking younger kids about how they felt about the robots, their opinions were all very similar. Most of them agreed that the robots, such as ELIZA, Speak and Spell and Sim games Tomagatchis, Furbys, My Real Baby, and AIBO weren’t just a toy to them, they required care and time, just like an actual pet or baby. The more effort the child had to put into taking care of the robot, the more they became attached and dependent on the robots companionship, reliant on the fact that the robots were always available to comfort them when they needed. In the journals Turkle asked the families to keep recording their experiences with the robots they brought home, some of the repeated themes she noticed was that they envisioned that robots were more reliable, could be a better caretaker, provided better companionship, and were more indestructible than humans providing the same services. Because these robots are given human like qualities, we develop relationships with them due to the idea that “we love what we nurture,” so as we interact with our robots, the more they become “alive enough” for us to consider them a companion (31).

During interviews and observations of the elderly’s interactions with robots, the opinions were a lot more varied. Many thought that having a fake baby doll sitting in their room was obnoxious and annoying, while others really enjoyed having a sociable robot to keep them company. The PARO robot, a sociable seal robot, has shown to be beneficial for patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, helping them practice communicating and keeping their minds busy.  The children interviewed thought that the idea of having a robot keeping their grandparents company would be helpful in case something were to happen to them, circling back to how the kids thought robots were “indestructible,” unlike people, who could, for lack of a better phrase, collapse dead at any moment.

Introduction

In a society reliant on technology, how does this affect our personal lives and face-to-face interactions? This is the question author Sherry Turkle focuses on in her book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other.” Through performing various experiments and observations, she determines that although we are all very much reliant on some form of technology, whether we like to admit it or not, our dependence tends to revolve around communication.