Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Since 1995, Turkle has studied adolescents and adults in the culture of connectivity. In her forthcoming book, “Alone Together: Sociable Robots, Digitized Friends, and the Reinvention of Intimacy and Solitude,” to be published in January by Basic Books, she explores how humans have come to expect more in terms of relationships from machines and less from each other. Among her key questions are these: What are the limits of “relationship” with a machine? What is intimacy without privacy? What is democracy without privacy? How do the always-on/always-on-you demands of digital life interfere with people’s need for solitude, the kind that refreshes and restores?
