Expos Writing

100R/Fall 2020/ Peer-Group Questions for Turkle’s“Alone Together”

1. Explain the title. Use quotes to illustrate your interpretation.

2. Who is Turkle? Turkle tells us in the essay that she is “a psychoanalytically trained psychologist” (267). How would you say her psychological expertise shapes her perspective to the topics of social robots and all the new (communication) technology we humans invented?

3. What does Turkle mean by “Our networked life allows us to hide from each other”? (263) Give examples from the essay to illustrate Turkle’s assertion. What do you think of her point? Why?

4. What are the titles of the books of Turkle’s “trilogy on computers and people”? (264) What is the focus of each book?

5. What does Turkle’s key term, “The Robotic Moment,” mean? Where does she most define this term? How?

6. At one point she tells us that this is “not a book about robots. Rather, it is about how we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face” (265). Close read this quote, and give other examples to define this key concept.

7. How does Turkle’s daughter, Rebecca, illustrate the “Robotic Moment”?

8. What does Turkle mean that the “Darwin exhibition put authenticity front and center”? (266)

9. Why does Turkle bring in Darwin’s “theory of evolution by natural selection, the central truth that underpins contemporary biology”?(265)

10. How is “the notion of authenticity” defined in Turkle’s essay? (266) Cite 2 or 3 examples of where the word “authenticity” is used. How do you see the term/idea of “authenticity”? Is Turkle opposing technology and biology to define “A”?

11. What does David Levy mean that “‘Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans’”? (266) What is Turkle’s view to Levy’s premise? Cite examples. What do you think of Levy’s point?

12. Are robots/computers part of the evolutionary process on planet earth?

13. What are the “‘Darwinian buttons’” and how do robots imitate such “human” traits? (269)

14. Turkle writers: “Teenagers are drawn to love stories in which full intimacy cannot occur–here I think of current passions for films and novels about high school vampires who cannot sexually consummate relationships for fear of hurting those they love” (272). What notion of intimacy is Turkle pointing to in “Teenagers”? Are vampires and robots offeringdifferent versions of some kind of inter-species relationships?

15. What does Turkle mean that some kind of “blurring of intimacy and solitude” goes on with technology as the “architect of our intimacies”? ( 273, 263)

16. What does T mean by “Connectivity and Its Discontents”? What famous writer does her section title borrow from?

17. What is “public space”? (275) How does it differ from private space? Are the new communication technologies changing “what people mostly want from public space”? What do you want from public spaces?

18. What does “alone together” mean in the essay? (275) Cite examples.

19. Turkle writes: “Our new devices provide space for the emergence of a new state of the self, itself, split between the screen and the physical real, wired into existence through technology” (277). Is technology creating a new sense of self for humans?

20. What “gathering clouds of a perfect storm” is Turkle talking about? (278) Is Turkle anti-technology?

21. Do you think some kind of marriage between humans and computers and other technologies is changing and/or will change “our sense of being human”? (264)

22. Point to, twice, examples where you/we might connect a passage from Turkle with one from Tufekci to create a body paragraph. Plus, attempt a topic sentence connecting, suggesting, some kind of relationship between the quotations (directly or indirectly).