Connected, but alone?

They say technology is the greatest contributor to the development of mankind. They say it has changed our lives for the better. But is it invariably so? The cultural analyst Sherry Turkle, who specializes in the study of how technology is shaping the modern social life, proves it wrong in her speech “Connected, but alone?”, introducing us the negative effects our devices have on human communication.

It is worrying to Shelley, how technology is redefining our understanding of the very basic idea of what communication is.  Communication is the exchange of information between at least two sides. It is a mutual relationship – the one in possession of the info needs the other to listen and reflect, while the other needs someone to let him in on the topic in the first place. However, by looking towards robots and similar machinery for company, we are actually breaking this sense of mutuality because it is simply easier that way. In this case, we have control over the flow of communication – we don’t need to take into account the other sides’ views and can shape the conversation to fit our comfort zone, leaving no chance for spontaneity. The former is what people fear the most about real-time social interaction because it exposes them with no way to click the undo button.

While making us unable to freely socialize, technology has also robbed us of the ability to cope with loneliness, according to Shelley. We spend the better part of our days in the virtual world, trying to constantly find company. However, it is in solitude where we can explore and define ourselves, which is necessary to be able to appreciate those surrounding us. If we are disconnected from our deeper selves, we turn to others to compensate the lack of self-assurance, therefore using them rather as “spare parts”, as Shelley put it, than companions. So as long as we keep running away from solitude into the depths of the Internet, we are actually falling deeper and deeper into isolation in reality. Therefore, it is of fundamental importance that we try to plug off once in a while to learn to deal with the company of our own selves.

However, Shelley finds it is not all that bad. She is strongly optimistic, that the onslaught of technology is simply a touchstone on our way to better, more true-hearted communication. It may actually be considered a tool to help us affirm our values and direction, to make us appreciate the company of one another over all else. Because, in the end, technology is just an emotionless bundle of codes and machinery which can offer us nothing more but what we know to ask for. We force it to work our way by programming them to act in a certain way under certain circumstances. Real human relationships, on the contrary, take unexpected turns and constantly surprise us since we can never know what the other person has in store for us. It is this same spontaneity we are so afraid of that actually emotionally attracts us to each other the way that computers will never be able to.

Technology is great. There is no denying that. But there is no such thing that is all-good, so we have to be on a constant lookout for its negative effects. As it endangers face-to-face human communication, it important to once again redefine the ways we see communication in order to ensure the sustainability of the social species that we as Homo sapiens sapiens are. 


HM