When I began reading Alone Together by Sherry Turkle, I noticed that the way this author was writing was very hard to understand, so I needed to go back and reread the first few chapters. After this, I realized that I began to annotate.
In the first few chapters the author begins on how humans may rely on technology more than we should leaving us more alone than before. She continues on a study on how some humans identify how their robot is "alive" or not. The robots studied are known as Tamagotchis and Furbies both in which demand attention. However, when several children were asked what makes a human a human, the “children considered people special because only they could ‘feel’” (30). On the contrary, These two unique robots, need attention, they need to be fed, making the definition of the children complicated. If a human's only way of being alive is the ability to feel, wouldn't that make these robots alive as well?
Tricia Roserie
I agree with you in that all of these books are difficult to understand. I wish the authors would formulate the text in a way that it would be easier to digest for young adult readers like us. Moreover I agree with your observations, the more people are attach to technologies wether it offers them convenience or connectivity the more we distance ourselves from each other.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, Alone Together was confusing when I first started reading it. As a person who loves reading, I was kind of annoyed with my inability to understand it. This made me disappointed because this feeling towards the book made it so much harder for me to read. I had to read slower and when I was finished, I had to read it again since I still did not understand what Turkle wrote. I tried to force like the book since this is the one novel that we have to write down on notebook. Despite trying to change my feelings, the book was still a little bit boring. I did not really care for the way the author wrote down the words he used to prove his point. But I do know one thing, I have to get used to reading books like this. This is a college course class and it is expected to be difficult for highschool students.
ReplyDeleteThe first part of this book confused me as well. The robots are not really "alive" because what students perceive as alive is false. The relationship or alive feeling they get from a robot is manufactured and completely one-sided.
ReplyDelete