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"Tethered Teens"

Professor Sherry Turkle, MIT

 

Wednesday, March 3, 2010
5:00pm
Salomon Hall. Room 101
Brown University Campus Green
A reception and book signing to follow

"I would rather text than talk," says a sixteen-year old high school junior. She is not alone. Professor Sherry Turkle (MIT) will discuss a new generational sensibility - how teens are tethered to their social network technologies. Today's teenagers have grown up with social network technologies that affect how they think about privacy, companionship, the nature of friendship. For these teens (and others): What is intimacy without privacy? What is democracy without privacy? Are we more together or alone with such technology?

Prof. Turkle was recently interviewed on as part of the February 2, 2010 WGBH Frontline program "Digital Nation."
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ )

 

 

 

by
Sherry Turkle, PHD
Author of Simulation and Its Discontents

The Speaker

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001 and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personalitypsychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Professor Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She is engaged in active study of robots, digital pets, and simulated creatures, particularly those designed for children and the elderly as well as in a study of mobile cellular technologies.

Profiles of Professor Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times,Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She is a featured media commentator on the effects of technology for CNN, NBC, ABC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline and 20/20.