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/
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