Sherry Turkle’s description of the always-connected life experience focuses on qualitative change in a sense of self and of relations.
A new state of the self, itself
The connections that matter
Phoning it in
The tethered teen
New forms of validation
Leaving the time to take our time
Boundaries
A self shaped by rapid response
Tethered: to whom/to what.
Turkle describes a nursing home resident attributing feelings to a “therapeutic robot”. She coins the term, ‘Relational Artifacts’ for technological systems designed to induce projection.
Now, computational creatures have been designed that evoke a sense of mutual relating. The people who meet relational artifacts are drawn in by a desire to nurture them. And with nurturance comes the fantasy of reciprocation. They want the creatures to care about them in return. Very little about these relationships seems to be experienced “as if”.
References
Cohen, J., 2003. Cartoon of the Week. The Funny Times Cartoon Treasury. Available at: http://www.funnytimes.com/cartoons.php?cotw_id=20031231 [Accessed January 10, 2010].
Turkle, S., 2006. Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self. In J. Katz, ed. Handbook of Mobile Commuications and Social Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Available at: http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/Always-on%20Always-on-you_The%20Tethered%20Self_ST.pdf [Accessed January 9, 2010].