we are going to spend a lot of the day thinking about the way that digital intelligence is going to change the world and we thought it would be interesting to take a moment to think about how all this interaction with computers might be changing us so we're gonna have a brief conversation about that question and who better to talk about it then sherry turkle who's a sociologist from MIT who spent three decades looking at the way that we interact with computers so sherry please hi good to see so you've been on something of an evolutionary
journey that I think it's fair to say that some time ago you were a great fan of technology and now you've evolved to a point at which many might describe you as a critic tell me very briefly about that journey we have a problem with a microphone you want to try again yeah I don't think of myself as a critic I not anti-technology I'm pro conversation so my criticism really is of technology where um if we were sitting together and this has become something that just people do I would say to you will just hold
on a second I need to check my phone and then come back to you as though I had put you on pause I mean that's kind of my that's my kind of criticism is where technology stands in the way of the kinds of conversations where intimacy thrives were empathy thrives on in terms of my evolution how I got started was being very pro and excited about technology because i thought the technology was starting a lot of new kinds of conversations and this was in the late 1970s at the birth of the personal computer movement I
called the computer a second self because I saw the way people were really looking at what they put on their screens as a projection of who they were and had a relationship with these technologies that really was more intense and involved in the tip than the relationship they had with cars or stereos because they saw the computer and their own computer really is a reflection of their own minds but that that is just enhance now that is more the case now and yet you're feeling about the effect that that's having has become more negative well
now we're in a different space where the phones that we carry the mobile technologies that we carry are not just a projection of ourselves but connect us you know with the world of other people in ways that paradoxically can interrupt our involvement with other people and I think that's the kind of paradoxical moment we're at where we're just figuring out how to make sure that these phones keep us in contact with the world rather than really cut short our contact with the world so for example research shows that if I put a phone down on
the table if we were having lunch two things would happen what we talked about would become more trivial at that lunch because people wouldn't want to be interrupted and so the conversation kind of flattens out to more trivial things and then also the parties and the conversation feel less empathically connected to each other so what you want to do was not not use your phone but you want to think about not putting your phone out during lunch you want to think about not putting your phone out when you're having breakfast with your children that sounds
pretty hard to do I can't imagine children listening to that instruction no actually I found that it's the other way around that i found a generation of children who were kind of tugging at the sleeves of their parents asking for more attention so I'm optimistic because I think the children who were growing up now are growing up kind asking for attention from parents who were often too preoccupied and this is a generation of children in America which is kind of very tech savvy can you globalize this view at all or is it is the research
very much based on the doors no I am globalizing this view because I think the children desiring attention and not getting I contact with parents and not not feeling that they're having the attention but rather are sort of being you know kind of one in many things that you know we have baby bouncers that have a slot for an iPad we have potty trainers that have a slot for an iPad these are these are technologies that are global technologies that are being marketed globally and that these are these are technologies that show I think that
we haven't put this technology in its place because these are moments where children need our attention need eye contact need are you know really full attention ok and one of the things that's going to be discussed today is also the movement towards social devices that that take on the role of a person and do things for you and interact with you so that's a different dimension on this how do you feel about those well I would say that the two technologies that brought me to a more critical position we're on the one hand the sort
of always on always on you technologies that we've been discussing and then the second one was the development of social robotic sociable technologies that are of a certain sort the ones that I think we need to rethink or think very carefully about are the ones that pretend empathy because in all of the wonderful intelligence that we've been talking about that machines can have the thing that they can't have and that I think we interfere with children's development when we pretend they can is that they can't have human empathy they can't have had the experiences that
human being has gone through and so as in my own development of the researcher I began to see machines that evoked in children the feeling that they were with machines that pretended empathy I was also caught short and felt that there was something to be concerned with here but not just children also the elderly because I think we have a tendency to think that we can give as companions for example machines that pretend to empathy both to children and also to the elderly and I think in the case of the elderly um break our compact
with them to hear their stories by people who can understand the stories they're telling so I was doing research with one woman who was trying to talk about the death of the child and to a robot that was pretending to understand and of course it did not and was heartbreaking I mean I suppose that there are always replacements for human empathy they thought they've always been pets children have cuddly toys away with which they empathize to a certain degree so this is just a new dimension of it and just needs to be handled in the
same way as we handle those other things no I don't agree I a cuddly toy is a passive object on which a child projects the child's feelings so for example a child who's just broken her mother's crystal will put her Barbie dolls in detention in order to you know have a chance to work through her guilt on the doll that she projects guilt onto so dolls have always been a way to to play with and deal with the child's own feelings if you have a doll that comes to you pretending to have a life pretending
to have a life have its own guilt you're dealing with with something very different and one that I think we have to make sure the child isn't themselves silence happily there's time for you to explore all of this more in one of the afternoon paddles the sunday but let me just close and I have to please my own time keeping better than everybody else I guess but let me just close by asking what would take it for you to evolve back to a position of being very positive I would be very positive well I think
actually right now what makes me positive is I think that we are becoming more sensitive I see I mean list of course I'm talking about my own country I think that the generation who grew up with devices are starting to put away devices when when it is time to have a conversation and are becoming more you know aware of of not wanting to will to keep that break and you know to not have that break-in eye contact and to make sure the conversations happen well thank you for this device free conversation a device free conversation
thank you thank you
