I share, therefore I am: how technology is making us more lonely

"Connected, but alone?" was a TED talk given by Sherry Turkle last February. It's an excellent look at the ways in which we are isolating ourselves in and through technology. We have a desire to connect more with people, but the ways in which we are connecting are actually making us more lonely. Check it out:



And here are some of her quotes:

"We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere, connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives."

"We can end up hiding from each other even as we are all connected to each other." 

"Human relationships are rich, and they're messy, and they're demanding, and we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that we do is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection." 

"We use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves, so a flight from conversation can really matter because it can compromise our capacity for self-reflection." 

"People get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they become almost willing to dispense with people all together." 

"That feeling that no one is listening to me is very important in our relationships with technology. That's why it's so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed: so many automatic listeners. And the feeling that no one is listening to me makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us." 

"Technology appeals to us most, where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy." 

"We are designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." 

"I share, therefore I am." 

"You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude. The ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself and where you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are, it's as though we are using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self. We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we're at risk, because actually it's the opposite that's true. If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely."