SHERRY TURKLE has spent the last 30 years studying the psychology of people's relationships with technology. She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. A licensed clinical psychologist, she is the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Turkle is the author five books and three edited collections, including a trilogy of three landmark studies on our relationship with digital culture- The Second Self, Life on the Screen and most recently, Alone Together. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, she is a featured media commentator. She is a recipientof a Harvard Centennial Medal and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Turkle is by no means antitechnology. But after a career examining relations between people and computers, she blends her description with advocacy. She presents a powerful case that a new communication revolution is degrading the quality of human relationships." -- Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review of Books
"Turkle deftly explores and explains the good and bad of this
'flight from conversation' while encouraging parents, teachers and
bosses to champion conversation, use technology more intentionally
and serve as role models." --Success, A Best Book of 2015
"Reclaiming Conversation reminds readers what's at stake
when devices win over face-to-face conversation, and that it's not
too late to conquer those bad habits." - Seattle
Times
"Turkle's witty, well-written book offers much to ponder.... This
is the season of polls and sound bites, of Facebook updates
extolling the perceived virtues or revealing the assumed villainy
of opinions. Talk is cheap, but conversation is priceless." -
Boston Globe "Drawing from hundreds of interviews, [Turkle]
makes a convincing case that our unfettered ability to make digital
connections is leading to a decline in actual conversation--between
friends and between lovers, in classrooms and in places of work,
even in the public sphere. In having fewer meaningful conversations
each day, Turkle argues, we're losing the skills that made them
possible to begin with--the ability to focus deeply, think things
through, read emotions, and empathize with others." --The
American Scholar
"This is a persuasive and intimate book, one that explores the
minutiae of human relationships. Turkle uses our experiences to
shame us, showing how, phones in hand, we turn away from our
children, friends and co-workers, even from ourselves." -
Washington Post "Reclaiming Conversation is best
appreciated as a sophisticated self-help book. It makes a
compelling case that children develop better, students learn
better, and employees perform better when their monitors set good
examples and carve our spaces for face-to-face interactions."
- Jonathan Franzen, The New York Times Book Review
"Nobody has thought longer or more profoundly than Sherry Turkle
about how our brave new world of social media affects the way we
confront each other and ourselves. Hers is a voice--erudite and
empathic, practical and impassioned--that needs to be
heeded."-Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Author of Plato at the
Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away. "This book makes a
winning case for conversation, at the family dinner table or in the
office, as the 'talking cure' for societal and emotional ills."
- Publishers Weekly
"A timely wake-up call urging us to cherish the intimacy of direct,
unscripted communication."
- Kirkus
"'Only connect!' wrote E. M. Forster in 1910. In this wise and
incisive book, Sherry Turkle offers a timely revision: 'Only
converse!'"
- Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and The Glass
Cage
"Smartphones are the new sugar and fat: They are so
potent they can undo us if we don't limit them. Sherry Turkle
introduces a lifesaving principle for the twenty-first century:
face-to-face conversation first. This heuristic really works; your
life, your family life, your work life will all be better. Turkle
offers a thousand beautifully written arguments for why you should
lift your eyes up from the screen."
- Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired; author of What
Technology Wants "Digital media were supposed to turn us from
passive viewers to interactive participants, but Turkle reveals how
genuine human interaction may be the real casualty of supposedly
social technologies. Without conversation, there is no syntax, no
literacy, no genuine collaboration, no empathy, no civilization.
With courage and compassion, Turkle shows how the true promise of
social media would be to reacquaint us with the lost of art making
meaning together."
- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock
"To reclaim conversation is to reclaim our humanity. We all know it
at some level, and yet how satisfying to find our hunch proved
right: Turkle shows us that to love well, learn well, work well,
and be well, we must protect a vital piece of ourselves, and can.
What an important conversation about conversation this is."
- Gish Jen, author of Typical American and Mona in the Promised
Land
"Like the air we breathe, or the water we drink, most of us take
face-to-face conversations for granted. In this brilliant and
incisive book, Sherry Turkle explains the power of conversation,
its fragility at present, the consequences of its loss, and how it
can be preserved and reinvigorated."
- Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of
Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education
"Sherry Turkle's unrivalled expertise in how people interact with
devices, coupled with her deep empathy for people struggling to
find their identity, shine through on every absorbing and
illuminating page of Reclaiming Conversation. We can start
remembering how to talk to one another by talking about this timely
book."
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and
author of MOVE and Confidence
"It is a rare event when a single book presents both a compelling
indictment of one of the more insidious effects of technology on
our culture and an immediate, elegantly simple antidote---all the
while providing a stirring apologia for what is most important
about language's power to move us, to expand our thoughts, and to
deepen our relationship to each other. Once again, Sherry Turkle
seeks to preserve human qualities that are eroding while we are
always "elsewhere": empathy, generativity, and mentoring our
young."
-Maryanne Wolf, John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public
Service, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research,
and Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and
Human Development at Tufts University
"In a time in which the ways we communicate and connect are
constantly changing, and not always for the better, Sherry Turkle
provides a much needed voice of caution and reason to help explain
what the f*** is going on."
- Aziz Ansari, author of Modern Romance
Praise for Alone Together "Savvy and insightful."
- New York Times
"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."
- Wall Street Journal
"Nobody has ever articulated so passionately and intelligently what
we're doing to ourselves by substituting technologically mediated
social interaction.... Equipped with penetrating intelligence and a
sense of humor, Turkle surveys the front lines of the
social-digital transformation...."
- Lev Grossman, Time Magazine
"Important.... Admirably personal....Turkle's book will spark
useful debate...."
- The Boston Globe
"Turkle summarizes her new view of things with typical
eloquence...fascinating, readable."
- New York Times Book Review
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |