Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the founding director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self. She researches how technology can undermine our capacities for empathy and solitude and how to design for our human vulnerability. The author of Reclaiming Conversation and Alone Together, Turkle’s latest book is The Empathy Diaries, a Memoir. Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, and WIRED. A Harvard Centennial medalist and Guggenheim and Rockefeller humanities fellowships recipient, Turkle was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.
Previously
Democracy is in danger, not only in foreign places where autocrats rule, but also here at home. We are divided between those who would let the people rule and those who would...
While the act of spacing out has long been attributed to fueling creativity, many of us are downright uncomfortable with being bored. In fact, a prominent social science study...
As educators, parents, policymakers, and psychologists wrestle with the question of what we gain and what we give up as our reliance on technology grows by the day, digital na...
Technology may teach the pleasures of controlled exchanges—admit it, texting is often so much easier than real-time talking. But here is what we know about life: We lose out a...