Sherry Turkle

If people start to buy the idea that machines are great companions for the elderly or for children, as they increasingly seem to do, we are really playing with fire.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesn't teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.

People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.

What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.

If we don't know how to be alone, we'll only know how to be lonely.

It’s a way of life to be always texting and when you looks at these texts it really is thoughts in formation. I do studies where I just sit for hours and hours at red lights watching people unable to tolerate being alone. Its as though being along has become a problem that needs to be solved and then technology presents itself as a solution to this problem…Being alone is not a problem that needs to be solved. The capacity for solitude is a very important human skill.

Technology challenges us to look at our human values. We can try to use technology to cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, which would be a blessing, but that blessing is not a reason to move from artificial brain enhancement to artificial intimacy.

Our mobile devices are so powerful that they don't just change what we do, they're changing who we are.

I am not anti-technology; I am pro-conversation.

We don't need to reject or disparage technology. We need to put it in its place.

Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.

These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.

Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.