Alone Together

A few days ago I finished reading Sherry Turkle's recent book "Alone Together."  There was a lot about this book that was fascinating.  I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book.  Essentially a tour through current advances in the field of robotics, this section has some interesting anecdotes about how different people interact with the same robot and come to view it as a social being (either in good ways or in pathological ways).  I also enjoy reading about how people find different uses for technologies.  I have always believed computers to be a very flexible medium in which one can do and express all manner of things.

Having said that though I did not care for the parts of the book that sounded like the ramblings of a curmudgeon.  For example, with shrill statements such as "They keep us busy.  It is as though we have become their killer app,"  Turkle assigns a malevolent agency to something that has no agency at all.  One could employ this same logic to assert that when a person uses a hammer she becomes a slave to that instrument.

I should pause here and confess that, as someone who works in the field of software development and who has taken a liking to smartphones I am somewhat biased in technology's favour.  So of course I'm going to take issue with categorical statements that computer technology acts as some kind of impediment to our human nature.  Like anything it can be abused.  And I would argue that Turkle's book is not so much an exploration of how technology is depriving "us" (presumably everyone) of human contact but rather an exploration of some of its mis-uses.

My problem with this book lies not in its finding that there are people who text hundreds of times a day or that there are video game addicts who have dropped out of society.  Indeed I myself have noticed certain foolish activities like distracted driving that some have done with their smart phones, and that definitely irks me.  Rather my problem with the book is with its conclusion that "we" as a society all engage in the same behaviours described in it.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.  I hope to write mostly about concepts in programming and maybe to comment on current events if I do enough research so I can sound intelligent.

I'm currently employed as a software engineer at a great company.  My responsibilities there include designing, developing, and debugging software.  I try also to find innovative ways of doing other tasks I'm given to take care of.  It's a cool job with lots of interesting opportunities.

In my spare time I like to read, to create 3D models when I have the time, and of course to experiment with programming.