The Horror of Technology
A week before classes started I went to the bookstore to purchase my books required by classes. For my English Composition class two books were necessary, The Norton’s Field Guide to Writing and Alone Together by Sherry Turkle. I thought to myself, “Great! Not only do we have to write in this class, but we also have to read a book.” I read the cover of the book to get an idea of what this book was all about. “Why we expect more for technology and less from each other”. It seemed slightly interesting. People always hear from their older relatives, “Back in my day…” These statements usually shocked us. Like, how did they do that, or how did they survive? It intrigued me to learn how technology has affected us.
We were first assigned to read the Author’s Notes and the Introduction. From this I found out Sherry Turkle was actually a creditable source, not just some random person ranting. She is a teacher at MIT, and also psychoanalytically trained psychologist (Turkle ix-xvii). Likewise, I found out Turkle used various methods to collect data for her book: clinical trials, interviews, research, studying certain age groups, and immersing herself in the environment. We will go more in depth on these methods later. She seemed like an amazingly laid back writing in these sections being very open, throwing in a few comical lines, and telling many stories. “Maybe this was not going to be a boring book after all,” I considered to myself with relief.
During the course of the reading we were assigned to use many different reading strategies to help us connect with the text and be more engaged in the readings. As we began reading Chapter 1, we were encouraged to write notes in the margin, circle words that were important or we did not understand, and connect points in the book with arrows. This technique proved very beneficial for me. I am a very