Krost Symposium

After having attended Dr. Sherry Turkle’s presentation, “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” I find that I agree with her on how  technology has reshaped how people interact with each other and that the changes made need to be reworked for the better. The reason is, as Dr. Turkle said, people have become so linked and attached to phones, computers, and various social programs and websites  that countless hours are spent tailoring and remodeling online selfs in order to make them perfect and escape from the real world. For example, Dr. Turkle talked about a man that spent hours on SecondLife talking to another user, so far as to convince her not to committ suicide. It was later revealed that the other user the man had been talking to was an older man from Florida. This made up world the first man had been living in was pulled out from under him. Everything he thought he know about himself had been taken away and brought into question. Adults  are not the only ones with problems concerning technology and social media.  Dr. Turkle said, during the presentation, that many kids and teenagers find it difficult to talk to their parents because their parents’s attention is not on the kids, but on computers and cell phones. What this is teaching kids, Dr. Turkle said, is not how to be alone, but how to be lonely. However, like Turkle, I belive there is hope still left in this digital world. People just need to find that balance between their lives and their technology that works for them. If they ever get the feeling that they are addicted to any of these thigns then they should simply put it down and back away from it for awhile and see how they feel about it afterwards. In the end the matter of whether or not any of theses problems are problems for anyone lies with the user. It is the user’s choice to bring these thigns into their lives and reshape how they live it.