Compiled by Holly Taylor

1. Sherry Turkle: Online Age
Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology
Focuses her research on human technology interaction.
She talks about how the use of technology not only changes what we do but how we
think.
She looks at negative issues surrounding false identity being created online (e.g.
adults pretending to be young and young pretending to be adults)
But Turkle suggests that assuming different personal identities can also be
therapeutic.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/talhotblond/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1
This programme has links with the issues of false identity.
http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/turkle/turkle_transcript.html
This interview also has really good examples about false identity online on it.
“It's one of the things that I argue gives it a kind of excitement as a place to live out
your fantasies and experiment with aspects of yourself. But it also means that when
you meet people online they're not necessarily who they say they are.”
Devaluation of authentic experience in a relationship – we have turned into social
robots, we don’t know how to interact anymore or experience real things in reality
rather than online.
She discovered that people use virtual reality to act as if it were reality. Human
behaviors such as romance are practiced in virtual reality. Spending a lot of time with
these Multi-user Domain (I think these are things like Second Life and World of
Warcraft) she realized how the Internet has become a modern day way of connecting
to people. The Internet links millions of people and it has begun to dictate the way we
think and learn.
"Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual.
We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of
thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity."
She says the self is a multiple distributed system - So I would see this as, the real us,
our Facebook us and our Twitter us etc, so each place can create a different identity
for us.
She says we are playing many roles at one time and real life is just one more role.
She also focuses on the effect of things like digital pets and simulated creatures and
the use of Mobile phones.
She argues that children today are so used to simulated objects, an example she gives
is robotic animals at a theme park, these robots move and play and entertain them.
Then when the children see the real animal it is not as exciting as the real animal does
what it wants (sleeps, eats etc) so the real animal does not appear as realistic to the
child as the robot animal.