Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

Turkle is the author of the book, a professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, and a clinical psychologist. She has spent decades interviewing people about their relationships with technology for her first two books, The Second Self (1984) and Life on the Screen (1995). For this book, she interviewed hundreds of people, from adults to young children, to give anecdotal context to support her points.

Audrey is a 16-year-old who talks about her Facebook profile as her “internet twin” and her avatar. She prefers texting to talking on the phone. Her parents are divorced, and she carries messages between them. She tries out different personalities for her Facebook profile and says that her online avatars boost her confidence. She also has a number of different avatars on Italian MySpace (to talk to different Italian guys from her semester abroad) and on various online games. She dislikes how ephemeral texting is but likes how safe it is.

Joel is a 26-year-old who plays Second Life. In real life he leads a software design team at a biotech firm. In Second Life, he is a pint-size elephant named Rashi who builds beautiful sculptures and organizes building projects in the virtual world.