3 Questions: Sherry Turkle on “Reclaiming Conversation”
Face it: Many conversations today involve distracted people looking at their phones, not their companions. To Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, the decline in thoughtful face-to-face interaction constitutes an epidemic. Her new book, “Reclaiming Conversation,” contends that we need meaningful conversations in our families, classrooms, and workplaces, to help us develop self-knowledge, empathy, and intellectual skills. The book has been widely praised: In The New York Times, Jonathan Franzen wrote that “Turkle’s argument derives its power from the breadth of her research and the acuity of her psychological insight.” MIT News recently spoke with Turkle about the book. Q. Your previous book, “Alone Together” (2011), examined some of the isolating effects of technology. How did you move from that to “Reclaiming Conversation,” which argues specifically that the erosion in our conversational abilities comes at a huge cost? A. “Alone Together”...