Sherry Turkle

MIT Professor; Founder and director, MIT Initiative on Technology and the Self

BIG IDEAS

• Identity Technologies
  Identity technologies are at the heart of the story of technology in the 21st century–technologies that change people's sense of possibility, who they are and who they might become.
  
  Faced with always-on/always-on-you communications technology, faced with online worlds that truly offer the possibilities of a parallel life, faced with sociable robots that make eye contact, track our movements, and engage in simple conversation, we are at a crossroads. Are we more alone or more together in our new digital culture? Sherry explores the implications of identity technologies for individuals, society and commerce.
• Evocative Objects
  We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with. Studies of scientists, humanists, artists, and designers teach us the power of everyday things. Objects are emotional and intellectual companions that anchor our memory, sustain our relationships, and provoke new ideas. A focus on everyday riches—an apple, a date book, a laptop computer—show us how objects bring philosophy down to earth. Objects carry both ideas and passions.
• The Robotic Moment and the American Heart
  Interest in robots that may serve as surrogates, particularly in the care of children and the elderly (the nannybot, the elderbot) is increasing. Often these robots are introduced as playthings, but Turkle’s work shows that there is growing acceptance of the idea that if people are able to bond and be comforted by the inanimate, then they should be. What are the moral, developmental, emotional implications of a certain technological promiscuity? How is it reframing what we mean by intimacy, about what is special about being a person?
• How to Make A Scientist
  For over thirty years, Sherry has studied the role that objects and the people we come to associate with them lead young people into science, in other words, how scientific minds are nurtured. Given our national crisis in science education, how can we rethink science education to balance our interest in the digital with a necessary new look at the objects-to-think-with that stand behind the birth of scientists?

SNAPSHOT BIO

A professor, author, consultant and researcher, Sherry Turkle has spent the last 20 years researching the psychology of people’s relationships with technology.  She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT.  She is the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts.

One of the few researchers in this field, Sherry offers a unique perspective on meaning and mechanisms – on humans and technology and social interaction.  Sherry is the author of several books including Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, and Life on the Screen:  Identity in the Age of the Internet. She is the editor of Evocative Objects: Thinking With Things, Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, and The Inner History of Devices.

Profiles of Sherry have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She is a featured media commentator on the effects of technology for CNN, NBC, ABC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline and 20/20. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

A Closer Look at Sherry

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Sherry's current research agenda?

Sherry is studying the effects of digital communication on our emotional lives, looking at children and adolescents as they are growing up, adults as they parent and as they function at work. Her focus here is on technology and identity, how technology affects how we see ourselves. The definitions of intimacy and privacy are changing. Can there be intimacy without privacy?

She is completing a ten year study of relational artifacts, in particular robotics, and what it tells us about who we are, how we think about intimacy, relationships, what is special about being a person.

She is deepening her study of objects and the emotional and intellectual bonds we form with them. In her forthcoming book, The Inner History of Devices, she explores the often-untold stories that stand beyond our relationships with technology.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Sherry's expertise, and what's ahead on her schedule?

Sherry has been an advisor on how the Blackberry Revolution has affected corporate culture, relationships within organization and productivity for a major consulting firm. She has also advised on the use of artificial intelligence in car design (Do we really want our steering wheels to talk to us?) for a major car manufacturer and on how to increase use of mobile “health” technologies by making them more “nurturant” for leading technology manufacturer.

She was an invited speaker at major consulting and manufacturing organizations on how digital technology changes how we think and our relationships with each other.

Within past five years: Keynotes at Oxford University, Oxford Internet Institute; American Museum of Natural History, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts; Marshall McLuhan Lecture at New York University; Stanford University, Institute for the Humanities; Dartmouth University Conference on “Artificial Intelligence at 50”; Artspace; American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Miliken Institute Global Conference; American Psychoanalytic Association; Yale University Institute for Social and Policy Studies - Ethics and Technology; Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.; POP!Tech; Harvard University Graduate School of Education Conference on Globalization; Sigmund Freud Museum; Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study; World Economic Forum, Davos.

This spring: keynote speaker at Nieman Foundation Conference, Harvard University Symposium on Bridging the Arts and Sciences, MIT Museum on Robots and the Human Spirit, a series of speaking engagements at the Intel Corporation.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Sherry's thinking and inspires her work?

The anthropologists Mary Douglas and Victor Turner; the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott; the educator Seymour Papert; the memoirist Joan Didion. I believe in an “intimate ethnography” that combines the power of traditional ethnography (anthropology), psychoanalytic ideas, and memoir. We won’t fully understand our relationships with technology without doing “inner history” that combines all three.

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Sherry's must-read list?

Sherry is investigating what she thinks of as a new “American Pragmatism,” a focus on how things behave, not on what they mean – so the American Pragmatists are high on her list, most particularly, William James.

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Sherry tap into to feed her mind and fuel her creativity?

Sherry relies on conversations and observations of people using digital technology.  She is looking for the story behind the “official story,” what she thinks of as the inner history of technology.

OUTREACH
What are Sherry's pressing questions, and on which topics does she seek your feedback?

What are the effects of digital media on relationships, sense of self, community within organizations, on feelings of intimacy and solitude?