Frank Baxter Outside Reading 1 (entry 11)

Frank Baxter Outside Reading 1 (entry 11)

In Sherry Turkle’s book called “Alone Together” talks about the radical phenomena of technology and its role with our social interactions. I felt that this reading was greatly related to our classes discussion on solitude versus loneliness. As the author Turkle points out technology makes us more interconnected, she opens the book with a interview at MIT where individuals lived as “cyborgs” meaning that they were tethered to the internet, scarcely a decade later when she published this book all of us are cyborgs, our phones, computers and other devices have us constantly connected to the internet and more importantly to other people.

So it is clear that technology has greatly removed our ability to be in solitude, but it has increased our ability to be lonely. This may seem paradoxical but if one thinks about it, we have many more relationships from technology, but all of these are cheap and shallow. We can be always reached if needed, so if were not we feel shunned.  In order to one feel completely alone, they must go off the grid. So the wilderness may be the last solitude, while it lasts.