Alone Together by Sherry Turkle Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle - Research Paper Example Forming social networks is an inherent trait, rather an inherent need, of all human beings. Such social networks may include our family, our friends and our colleagues. Today we can share any kind of information with our social network using social networking websites such as Face book, Twitter and YouTube through blogs, forums, video, audio, photos, online profiles and status updates. In the last few years social networking and social media sharing has gained immense popularity amongst millions of users worldwide. (Kaplan, 2010) The presence of IT has revolutionized each and every aspect of our lives. Not a single aspect of modern man’s life has been left untouched by the sweeping presence of IT in the form of the computer, the internet and the social media. Despite the uncountable gifts of the IT age, the over-involvement in the use of IT as a social ambassador has a flip side to it, which has been discussed at length in Alone Together, a remarkable work by MIT technology specialist Sherry Turkle. The work sums up the author’s fifteen-year-long study of human lives in the digital age. The arguments presented by the author are based on her interviews with hundreds of children and adults regarding their use of technology and its impact on their interpersonal relationships. The book discusses the instabilities that have crept into the modern day relationships owing to digitization and how they have modified the aligned concepts of privacy, relationship and community. The thesis of this paper is that Sherry Turkle is convincing in her argument that our growing dependence on social media technology has eventually led to the destruction of our humanity. In the first half of her book, Turkle talks about social robots, or the sci-fi machines that apparently possess all human-like qualities required to facilitate our day-to-day chores. But the author