@boomerang,
50 seconds in, and I have a quibble (of a type that I often have with TED-type talks).
She says that she "embodies the central paradox" -- a woman who loves getting texts, who's here to tell us "that getting too many of them can be a problem."
That's not a paradox! It's saying that while texting can be positive, texting too much can be a problem. That's not paradoxical at all, any more than saying that running a mile a day can be positive, but running 30 miles a day can be a problem.
The "too many" part is central, not the texting (or the running).
Oh come on. "You want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you." Well, yes? Board meetings can be deadly boring. One thing I've always loved about Deaf board meetings is that we can have conversations literally "under the table." We were doing that before Wyndtells ever came along (prototypical Blackberries), and then were some of the earliest ones to be doing that with our Wyndtells, back in the late 90's.
And in non-deaf situations I've long been writing notes, just paper notes. These actions are not new, just the mode is new.
Pathologizing boredom in board meetings is a bit silly.
"Across the generations, I see that people can't get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, and in amounts they can control."
I call bullshit, on a few levels. One, is this supposed to be new? My parents had a very fraught relationship with each of their own parents, and distance and control were very much a part of that. This went on for 20-30 years, and the parents in question (my grandparents) all died before a Blackberry ever appeared.
Second, my kid and her friends are voraciously social, in person (plus with text, but mostly to facilitate in-person socializing).
This is one of those sentences that seem to mean something, but what does it actually mean? People would prefer to socialize when they want to and not socialize when they don't want to? Well, yes?
The 18-year-old boy who doesn't know how to converse... sad. Maybe it's really about texting, I don't know. I tend to wonder where he'd be without texting, though. I've definitely met guys who said they just didn't know how to talk to anyone until mid-college -- they were speaking in retrospect, but I remember some of those in high school, too. They'd mumble and look away and nobody really talked to them. And they didn't have texting as an outlet, either.
Argh, OK so now she's just said some interesting stuff about connection vs. conversation, I was starting to find something to agree with, though not liking how she seems to make it all or nothing -- can't you have the edited connections but then real conversations as well? But waiting to see where she's going.
Then she mentions a profound question Stephen Colbert asked her about whether all those little sips add up to a conversation. She says no. She puts on the screen an illustration of two teens texting. The non-conversation, the bad stuff. What is it about though? Going to a party!! That's not incidental, IMO. Those non-conversational teens were setting up a time at which they're going to be together, in person.
"They don't really work for learning about each other," she says, of such texts, "for really coming to know and understand each other." That's what the party is for, though. The getting together in person that the texts
facilitate. (Though I do think boomer makes a great point that online communication CAN be for really learning about each other, coming to know and understand each other.)
I'd really like to know the context of her "I'd rather text than talk" quote. Rather text than talk
on the phone? Cycloptichorn, in the thread I linked to above, explained pretty well why he prefers texting to talking on the phone, especially in terms of making plans. I don't think he eschews all actual conversation though.
Oh gosh, what? This woman's logical leaps are irritating me. OK, people complain that nobody is listening. So she talks about Facebook etc., automatic listeners. That's good, right? No, it's bad. "The feeling that nobody is listening to me makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us." What? How is Facebook a machine that seems to care about us? I understand she might be referring back to the seal robot, but then why is she talking about Facebook? There are all of these conflations that seem to be intended to mean something but don't actually hold up. It's other people, on Facebook, who are doing the listening and caring. And I've seen that work, over and over again. It's helped me, over and over again.
And of course we've seen that here on A2K. The most powerful experience I had, I think, was when E.G. had appendicitis and had to have emergency surgery. I was stuck at home with the baby, it was the middle of the night, I was worried but really just had to wait. Roberta, Moondoggy and others talked me through it and really, really helped. I felt very listened to.
The sociable robot thing again seems to be actually more pro-technology than anti. People have been lonely in nursing homes from well before texting ever appeared.
That's an interesting question, and one I've thought about without coming to conclusions. The 60's were a period of great social upheaval, and a lot of things changed in terms of choices. This is good. If a marriage was bad, there was more room to divorce. If a woman wanted to work, there was more room for her to have a career. My parents did not get along with their parents, and they cut ties. They weren't seen as horrible people or social pariahs for having done so.
But the other side of more freedom was less obligation. My dad's mom died in a nursing home. She was not taken in by either of her two sons, who didn't want to take her in and didn't have to. Is this good or bad? I don't know.
But it all certainly predates texting.
And the baby seal robot doesn't have much to do with her thesis, so far as I can tell. Would she have felt the same way if it had been an actual dog, instead of a robot seal? What are the differences? Is a dog's empathy more "real"? Does a dog have "experience of the arc of a human life"? Yet, it's been proven that animals can be very therapeutic in those situations. I don't think that's a bad thing, nor that it says anything in particular about texting/ online connection.
"Technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable" -- I think that can be turned around a bit. "Technology appeals more to those who are most vulnerable." The gay teen out in the boondocks, who doesn't have the resources to leave, yet; the person wrestling with depression or disease, looking for other people who can understand; not to mention a deaf woman in a new town whose husband is undergoing an emergency appendectomy. Technology and online communication has a lot to offer those kinds of people.
Now she's getting into the waiting in the checkout line stuff I was talking about before. I agree with that.
I disagree with "being alone is a problem that needs to be solved" as a general thing, though. I think the check-out line and doctor's waiting room stuff is more about boredom. And people aren't just texting and Facebooking, they're playing Angry Birds (or equivalents), reading the NYT, etc.
Sozlet is very, very social, but she needs her downtime too. She likes to spend some time alone. Almost none of that is "connected" in the way Turkle is talking about it here. She reads, or plays with the iPod, or watches TV, or draws, or organizes something, or whatever. But she's not on Facebook, she texts but it's almost always goal-oriented (setting something up with a friend), she's not on Twitter or anything else. When she wants to be alone, she's alone.
I definitely like to spend chunks of time alone, some of that is definitely here and on Facebook, but most of it is non-connected alone time.
E.G. has a much smaller need for being alone, but he's been like that forever and ever, really since he was a baby but as long as I've known him. Certainly not linked to technology.
"We're smitten with technology and we're afraid, like young lovers, that too much talking might spoil the romance."
What?
I mean, what?
People talk about technology all the damn time... I don't think there's a deficit of technology talk. I mean, we can talk more, that's fine, but I think it's kinda silly to say that the talking hasn't been happening and needs to start.
She has a tiny little bit of actual practical advice in there that I'm fine with -- teaching our kids the value of solitude and the value of conversation. That by itself without the puffery around it is valid. The puffery is annoying me though.
"We spend the evening on our social networks instead of going to the pub with friends." Does she really think pubs are going out of business?
OK, done.