Sherry Turkle9780262701112, 0262701111
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 thishappens, and what it means for all of us – is the ever more timely subject of The Second Self. |
Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Acknowledgments……Page 10
Introduction to the MIT Press Edition (2004)……Page 16
Introduction (1984): The Evocative Object……Page 32
1 Child Philosophers: Are Smart Machines Alive?……Page 48
2 Video Games and Computer Holding Power……Page 80
3 Child Programmers: The First Generation……Page 106
4 Adolescence and Identity: Finding Yourself in the Machine……Page 146
5 Personal Computers with Personal Meanings……Page 170
6 Hackers: Loving the Machine for Itself……Page 198
7 The New Philosophers of Artificial Intelligence: A Culture with Global Aspirations……Page 234
8 Thinking of Yourself as a Machine……Page 262
9 The Human Spirit in a Computer Culture……Page 294
Epilogue (2004): Changing the Subject and Finding the Object……Page 302
A On Method: A Sociology of Sciences of Mind……Page 318
B Childrens Psychological Discourse: Methods and Data Summary……Page 328
Notes……Page 338
Index……Page 374 |
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