Should-Read: It is time for Sherry Turtle to 'fess up that she was wrong about the sociological impact of high-tech. The very change in its name should have clued her in: from "computer technology" to "information technology" to "information and computer technology—ICT". It is not isolating each of us in their own virtual world in which they do not encounter humans. It is, rather, making us hyper-social—with big costs as we have (so far) failed to develop effective enough ways to manage hypersociality, but also very big benefits: Kevin Drum: In Defense of Smartphones: "Sherry Turkle is an MIT professor who thinks social media is decimating face-to-face contact...
...Claude Fischer is a Berkeley professor who thinks social media has done nothing of the sort.... And again in 2015, responding to an essay by Turkle in the New York Times which suggested that conversation is dying as people escape into their smartphones:
There may well be something to this assertion. But we want some systematic, reliable evidence that Americans converse less in person than before, attend to one another less, and suffer more as a consequence. It is hard to find such evidence. Much of the “data” in Turkle’s essay (and I presume the new book) is anecdotal: As in Alone Together, the documentation is mainly people here and there, especially unhappy people, with whom she talks. These reports may all be totally truthful and still the thesis be wrong. Fifty years ago, Turkle might have well have heard similar grousing about people eating together silently, or burying their noses in the newspaper, or, heaven knows, turning away to watch the always-on TV set. In addition, Turkle cherry picks studies...
I don’t think there’s any doubt that social networks and ubiquitous smartphones are changing the way we relate with each other.... So far... Fischer has the better of the argument...
