As we communicate more and more through electronic devices, are we losing our ability to communicate face-to-face? That’s the question that Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Maize Professor at MIT, will pose in her talk on March 9 about her book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. The presentation in Decker Theatre at the Gibson Center for the Arts is free and open to the public.
Turkle has been studying digital culture for over 30 years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, in Reclaiming Conversation she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves. Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle’s work argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us, and that the time is right to reclaim conversation, the most human—and humanizing—thing that we do.
“What Turkle brings to the topic that is new is more than a decade of interviews with teens and college students in which she plumbs the psychological effect of our brave new devices on the generation that seems most comfortable with them,” says the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has called her “a singular voice in the discourse about technology.”
The Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning, the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Miller Library and Academic Technology, and the Washington College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa joined forces to sponsor this event. It will begin with a reception and chance to meet Turkle in the Underwood lobby at 4:00 p.m. The talk will start at 5:00 p.m., followed by a book sale and signing.
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