Licensed clinical psychologist and MIT professor of social science Sherry Turkle will present the weekly Carleton convocation on Friday, Oct. 26 at 10:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Turkle’s talk, “Necessary Conversations: Technology as an Evocative Object,” will look at the “subjective” side of people’s relationships with technology, in particular computers. This event is free and open to the public and will also be streamed live; view online at http://apps.carleton.edu/events/convocations/.
Turkle is an expert on mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics, and she uses the metaphor of “necessary conversations” to describe where technology has brought us. Her work looks at the implications of such phenomena as the Internet, social networking and artificial intelligence for the way humans perceive themselves and their world. Turkle has explored questions such as the proper role of the Internet in a liberal arts education, the impact of technology on democracy and privacy, whether the growth of technology has eroded bonds within human communities, and whether machines can ever be seen as people. In Turkle’s view, people have a tendency to flee from these sorts of conversations, but they need to take place and we need a new vocabulary in which to conduct them. Turkle is the author of eight books, most recently “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” (Basic Books, 2011), which discusses how the rise of social networking is limiting face-to-face human interaction, particularly among adolescents.
Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard. Profiles of Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine, and she has been named "woman of the year" by Ms. Magazine. She has been a featured commentator on a wide variety of television and radio networks and has appeared on such programs as Nightline, Frontline, 20/20, and The Colbert Report.
For more information about this event, including disability accommodations, contact the Carleton College Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4308. Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First Street between College and Winona Streets in Northfield.
