The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "When writing this book about computers and people, I immersed myself in a world that was altogether strange to me..." (more)
Key Phrases: Marvin Minsky, Software Wars, Space Invaders (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

(for the first edition)
"A brilliant and challenging discussion presented with extraordinary clarity."
— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world. "Technology," she writes, "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think." First published in 1984, The Second Self is still essential reading as a primer in the psychology of computation. This twentieth anniversary edition allows us to reconsider two decades of computer culture—to (re)experience what was and is most novel in our new media culture and to view our own contemporary relationship with technology with fresh eyes. Turkle frames this classic work with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and extensive notes added to the original text.

Turkle talks to children, college students, engineers, AI scientists, hackers, and personal computer owners—people confronting machines that seem to think and at the same time suggest a new way for us to think—about human thought, emotion, memory, and understanding. Her interviews reveal that we experience computers as being on the border between inanimate and animate, as both an extension of the self and part of the external world. Their special place betwixt and between traditional categories is part of what makes them compelling and evocative. (In the introduction to this edition, Turkle quotes a PDA user as saying, "When my Palm crashed, it was like a death. I thought I had lost my mind.") Why we think of the workings of a machine in psychological terms—how this happens, and what it means for all of us—is the ever more timely subject of The Second Self. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 362 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1St Edition edition (June 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671468480
• ISBN-13: 978-0671468484
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,496,415 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bold academic foray into a new media, August 11, 1997

By	[e-mail] (Tacoma, Washington) - See all my reviews

Turkle's seminal text examines the social implications of our increasingly computer-suffused lives. With a strong emphasis on individual interactions with computers, this ethnography describes an emerging post-modern computer culture, and goes on to interpret it in philosophical terms. A bit utopian, very smart, acts as a bit of a pre-quel to her recent work, Life on the Screen

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a worthy update, August 6, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Has it already been twenty years since the first edition of this book came out?! When it did so, it was soon regarded as a classic. The intervening years have done nothing to diminish that assessment. Turkle has updated it to form this second edition.

By and large, her analysis in 1984 proved on the mark. As computers have improved in power, and become smaller and more portable, their users tend to identify with them. And here it should be said that the cellphones of today are considered, and are indeed, computers in the context of this text. Certainly, a typical cellphone has a raw computational capacity exceeding the personal computers of 1984.

To some readers, the most puzzling thing may be why some users so identify with their computers, or half-jokingly, attribute personalities to them. There seems to be some innate urge in many people for this.

Needless to say, suppose we project out another 20 years. The trend is for more such behaviour. The sophistication and personalisation possible in those future mobile machines makes this inevitable. And this is even NOT assuming any breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, which might endow the devices with true personalities.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little bit of an open door., April 26, 2002

By	C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A classic in the field of human/computer interaction, it suffers a bit from its age (although I was delighted to read about the way children interacted with Merlin and Simon, given that I was a child who had interacted with both of the above). Children are so much more saturated with computers and computer technology than when the book was written, that I wonder how the observations will have changed.

_The Second Self_ is divided into three parts:

Part I: Growing Up with Computers: The Animation of the Machine
Part II: The New Computer Cultures: The Mechanization of the Mind
Part III: Into a New Age