Sherry Turkle Quotes

Technology doesn't just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.

We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they tend to reach for a device. In a movie theater, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.

What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.

It all stems from the same thing - which is that when we are face to face - and this is what I think is so ironic about Facebook being called Facebook, because we are not face to face on Facebook ... when we are face to face, we are inhibited by the presence of the other. We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

We used to think, 'I have a feeling; I want to make a call.' Now our impulse is, 'I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.'

We're too busy communicating to think, too busy communicating to connect, and sometimes we're too busy communicating to create. This is true for individuals and also true for organizations.

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

If we don't teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.

We expect more from technology and less from each other.

These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.

Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.

We don't need to reject or disparage technology. We need to put it in its place.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

We... heal ourselves by giving others what we most need.

Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of the people [they're] with and this other reality.