Customer Reviews

Life on the Screen

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sherry Turkle is a sociologist and a clinical psychologist. Her pioneering work has been done in the realm of computer mediated human interaction. One of her most commented on books is Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. This book is a serious look at the concept of identity and how identity is shaped on the Internet and through computer mediation.

Her major topic is how humans contain self on the Internet. She also spends a great deal of time discussing relationships on the Internet. With splintered selves involved, relationships become more complex. Her research on the way women and men view online sexuality is fascinating. Anyone interested in how the young people of the very near future will discover their sexual selves would do well to read this book. While Turkle is fairly straightforward in her findings, they may terrify some readers. This is a completely new sexuality, a completely foreign way of doing things. Her view is, of course, fairly clinical, but, in the end, I think she shows an amazing affinity with the people she has worked with. Turkle is not worried about the splintering of self. On the contrary, she thinks that some of these tactics: being able to play with and discover parts of yourself that you normally don't interact with is vital to development and mental health.

Another area that Turkle tackles is Artificial Intelligence. She considers AI to be the next frontier. These AI will be interacted with as a matter of course in the coming years, according to the author. Again, this area enthralls some readers and frightens others. Turkle is excited about what AI can do in terms of promoting dialog. Turkle sees the Internet challenging notions of what it means to be alive, notions of true identity, and the idea of community.

Turkle is at her best when she explores the concept of how people view themselves online. How they splinter off bits of their personality into different entities and play with and shape those identities. I can heartily suggest this book for anyone that works with K-12 students, for it is these students that are growing up on the screen. These are the students that are discovering community outside their immediate circle at younger and younger ages. These are the students that are discovering the meaning of identity online.

4 Stars out of 5.

Turkle does a magnificant job in illustrating the human persona while online. As our culture becomes more and more internet dependent, and it becomes easier to be a "globalized" person, psychological changes are sure to take effect. "Life On the Screen" is illustrated with some wry humor, as well as vivid examples.

Sometimes doing someonething online makes it seem less "real." For instance, carding something-aka using a fake credit card number-is less 'real' if you do it online, to order something, than it is to waltz into say, BestBuy and using a fake credit card there. Just because you do it in a non-physical area (what is Cyberspace made up of, anyway?) does not mean that it is still not a crime, and that it is still not capable of having reprecussions.

Shirley Turkle captures precisely what someone, as a user and interacter with the internet, thinks, and does while online. She acknowledges the existance of the internet being a place where people are able to forge "cyber-identities"...or get more comfortable being who they are. She also outlines something that is perhaps one of the most secure things about the internet in this day and age-that on the internet, you are anonymous. Therefore, you can do what you wish (good or bad) and you can interact with others via MUDs or the like...or you can decide exactly how people will think of you as.

The internet is a secure medium for an insecure person. It is where many people who feel unaccepted in life go as refuge, to seek friends and partners who are like them, and who understand. This is also recognized in this book.

I highly recommend anyone, either the hacker, or the suit, or the working mother, or the teenager, to pick up this book and just to start reading. It is disturbing, almost, to find that there are so many people who interact with the internet, and so many different things that they do. The globalization that comes along with the net provokes you to start rethinking many things, and questioning many others....The internet, as portrayed in this book, also helps the reader to truly examine themselves as a whole.

Turkle's book is one of the first ethnographies published on virtual communities and how we construct and reconstruct our senses of identity through the internet. It is therefore an important starting point for anyone with a general interest in this area research. Since this book was originally published however there has been a significant amount of work done on virtual communities and self-identity on the WWW that differs somewhat from Turkle's. Therefore although I highly recommend the book I also suggest that you take the time to explore this subject area more broadly before drawing any conclusions.

Sherry Turkle has written an engaging and thought-provoking book about how computers and the Internet have altered our lives. Moving beyond the concept that computers are just a tool, Turkle explains to the reader how technology allows us to explore and even alter our sense of "self." The ability to interact with other netizens in a variety of virtual settings, while adopting new personalities, has given many the freedom to explore aspects of their self-identity that without the anonymity of the electronic world would be impossible. Simulation is another area that Turkle offers interesting insights into how people perceive the world around them as a result of being able to model various possibilities via a computer simulation. These simulations and other children's toys are creating a generation who are asking the question "Is it alive?" of objects that most view as nothing more than tools or toys. Overall, I found Life on the Screen to be well written and extremely thought provoking. While you may disagree with her conclusions about technology and its affect on our concept of self, one of the key aspects of this book is that it makes you think about how your life has been altered not only physically by computers but also emotionally and psychologically. A very good read.

This book isn't for the newbie, but if you're already familiar with computers and what's possible on the Internet but haven't yet explored the world of MUDS and the like, this is one of the most informative and fascinating looks at the virtual world that you'll come across. Even more interesting are the questions that Turkle poses regarding self-identity and what the "self" is given the new "non"-environment we call cyberspace. Though offering few answers, the author introduces us to a future world of seemingly infinite possibilities for self-exploration and challenges us to ponder its implications for who we are, how we define ourselves, and how we interact with one another.

The author presents in her book many thoughtful and provocating ways computers are being used. Starting out with computer games as places for teenagers to hide out to scientists trying to create artificial life to children "morphing" through a series of virtual personae. On the Internet, confrontations with technology collides with ones sense of human identity. Ms.Turkle takes the reader into the text-based games where over ten thousand players can create a character or several characters specifying genders or any other physical and psychological attributes. This book presents stories of how artificial intelligence (AI) is being re-visited. Models are being designed to attempt to simulate brain processes. Furthermore, she presents her idea that AI is borrowed freely from the languages of biology and parenting, with examples such as the high school English teacher and basketball coach who tried using small connected programs to help him figure out what team to field. But readers may also find interesting is her discussion on the multi-users-domains (MUDs). The information the author has gathered from her research is very informative and yet somewhat disturbing. She presents insight on how and why individuals seek to take on new or different personas on line. Her findings point out the problems people face in life and then escape to the Internet as a release. One of the passages from her book readers might find to be very provocative. She says "Women and men tell me that the rooms and mazes on MUDs are safer than city streets, virtual sex is safer than sex anywhere, MUD friendships are more intense than real ones, and when things don't work out you can always leave! After reading her book, a reader should have a better understanding on why so many take to the MUDs in order to escape the pressures and the problems that the real world presents. One can only assume that these individuals would rather indulge in these activities than solve their problems. In summary, Ms Turkle has described "the computer as a tool, as a mirror and as a gateway to a world through a looking glass of a screen. In each of these domains we are experiencing a complex interweaving of modern and postmodern, calculation and simulation".

Turkle's thesis seems to be that cyberspace encourages us to explore new identities--not very controversial. However, she does provide a lot of interesting stories about life on the internet and the book is very well-written. I use her Introduction to start off my class in technology and it generates a lot of discussion.

Turkle's research findings are mind-boggling, exciting, terrifying, and (whether we like what we see or not) revealing. We see, here, glimpses of the future as a place where the real and virtual collide. Where who we are and how we think will differ markedly from all we've taken for granted in the old familiar pre-Info-Age. Anyone who works with children or adolescents of the Info-Age should read this book! I recommend it, along with the more up-to-date work by Don Tapscott.

Turkle's book is a good read, but can not be taken as authorative. She seems to have fallen into the same trap as most of the online researchers do. Turkle expresses her findings as though they come from a similar group of online people. The Internet is filled with various groups and ideologies. Cross-cultural comparison is fine, but considering everyone online as the starting point for an argument is just asking for disaster. It is because of this that Sherry and many others like her have written books that are good for a read but useless academically.

Turkel's book combines the best of her research in psychoanalysis, computer technology, and sociology. A readable and thought-provoking work for academics and general public. Timely subject-matter, with a po-mo focus that will make it interesting even in a few years when the technological references will be dated. Somewhat over-emphasizing the Usenet and MUD elements of Internet, with less on the World Wide Web. Highly recommended for those interested in exploring philosophical questions related to "being" in the computer age