Explore Quotes by Sherry Turkle

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of 'Wired' magazine. Then things began to change. In the early '80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

Teenagers would rather text than talk. They feel calls would reveal too much.

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made.

Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars 'device-free zones.' We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work.

The selfie makes us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us 'on pause' in order to document our lives. It is an extension of how we have learned to put our conversations 'on pause' when we send or receive a text, an image, an email, a call.

I've been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years.

I have to fight the impulse to use my phone as an alarm clock rather than leaving it in another room. If I don't, I will wake up in the middle of the night and think, 'I'll check my messages. Or the number of my book on Amazon.'

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

My highest value is not that the trains are on time. I want to be free.

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.

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.

Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do.

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

I am a single mum. I raised my daughter, and she was very listened to.

I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.

If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.

Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.

Everybody wants a robot that will do psychotherapy. But If you don't have empathy, you don't have psychotherapy. The robot doesn't know about life.

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.

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.