Sherry Turkle Quotes About Computers

Quotes about: Computers

• The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.

  Sherry Turkle

  Self, Ideas, Psychology

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.282, MIT Press

• Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

  Sherry Turkle

  Loneliness, Emotional, Self

  Sherry Turkle (1985). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, Touchstone Books

• One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.

  Sherry Turkle

  Sex, Taken, Long

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.285, MIT Press

• We ask [ of the computer ] not just about where we stand in nature, but about where we stand in the world of artefact. We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become.

  Sherry Turkle

  World, Links, Might

• Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.

  Sherry Turkle

  Lying, Insecure, Mirrors

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.279, MIT Press

• I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

  Sherry Turkle

  Writing, Thinking, Appreciate

• Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.

  Sherry Turkle

  Real, Color, Law

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.69, MIT Press

• Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

  Sherry Turkle

  Powerful, Computer

  Sherry Turkle (2005). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, p.311, MIT Press

• The computer is a mind machine. It doesn't have its own psychology, but in a way it presents itself as though it does.

  Sherry Turkle

  Psychology, Mind, Computer

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of Wired magazine. [Then things began to change. In the early 80s,] we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

  Sherry Turkle

  Technology, Attachment, People

  "Sherry Turkle: 'We're losing the raw, human part of being with each other'". Interview with Catherine de Lange, www.theguardian.com. May 4, 2013.

• The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

  Sherry Turkle

  Thinking, Knowing, Culture

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