Too WIRED To Connect - John Harlow - Ottawa Citizen, Feb 06-2011
This article reviews the book "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.
We email while we drive, text at funerals and have our cells ringing during graduation speeches and movies. In our obsessive need to be connected we forget that we are turning everyone off. . . . And yet we think we are communicating. . . even though we seem to have no idea what is said. We listen to our children and spouse and friends only and if they don't disturb our incessant need to be connected.
As the author of Alone Together implies - we have been taken over by the tools and not the message, the purpose nor the goal. When all is said and done, our craving to be connected has overtaken our need to meaningfully communicate. And because of this we have lost ourselves and this makes us useless in the eyes of others since there is no longer anyone there to communicate or share with. And so we gradually become more and more alone - with the one somebody we don't really want to be with, "ourselves".
This article reviews the book "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.
We email while we drive, text at funerals and have our cells ringing during graduation speeches and movies. In our obsessive need to be connected we forget that we are turning everyone off. . . . And yet we think we are communicating. . . even though we seem to have no idea what is said. We listen to our children and spouse and friends only and if they don't disturb our incessant need to be connected.
As the author of Alone Together implies - we have been taken over by the tools and not the message, the purpose nor the goal. When all is said and done, our craving to be connected has overtaken our need to meaningfully communicate. And because of this we have lost ourselves and this makes us useless in the eyes of others since there is no longer anyone there to communicate or share with. And so we gradually become more and more alone - with the one somebody we don't really want to be with, "ourselves".
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