I am overwhelmed by
that fantastic and profound essay. I’d love to add it to the
articles on my web site if someone points the way to the author.
Del
October is
Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Del Hunter Morrill,
M.S., N.B.C.C.H.
Personal Guide
& Hypnotherapist, Teacher, Lecturer
And Author of the
GREAT ESCAPES Script Volumes
TRANSITIONS, a
Center for Personal Guidance
And home of NEW
BEGINNINGS PUBLISHING
Phone
(253) 383-5757; www.hypnocenter.com
To be fully alive,
fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. (Pema Chodron)
From:
oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Shelley Hahn
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012
7:39 AM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] some
thoughts about the unintended side effects of new technology
Thanks for sharing this, Paul. Very profound and important.
Shelley
On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:40 AM, <PSchrijnen@aol.com> wrote:
further to our little conversation about
the impact of different technological platforms.......
This TED talk by Sherry Turkle covers the
challenge of what the digital revolution
is doing to our communication, connection
and capacity to cause and use reflection
This is well worth the 19 minutes.
Paul
And here is a transcript:
Just a
moment ago, my
daughter Rebecca texted me for good luck. Her
text said, "Mom,
you will rock." I love
this. Getting
that text was
like getting a hug. And so
there you have it.I
embody the
central paradox. I'm a
woman who
loves getting texts who's
going to tell youthat
too many of them can be a problem.
Actually
that reminder of my daughter brings
me to the beginning of my story. 1996,
when I gave my first TEDTalk, Rebecca
was five years old and
she was sitting right there in the
front row. I had
just written a book that
celebrated our life on the internet and I
was about to be on the cover of
Wired magazine. In
those heady days, we
were experimenting with
chat rooms and online virtual communities. We
were exploring different aspects of ourselves.And
then we unplugged. I was
excited. And,
as a psychologist, what excited me most was
the idea that
we would use what we learned in the virtual world about
ourselves, about our identity, to
live better lives in the real world.
Now
fast-forward to 2012. I'm
back here on the TED stage again. My
daughter's 20. She's a college student. She
sleeps with her cellphone, so do
I. And
I've just written a new book,but
this time it's not one that
will get me on the cover of
Wired magazine. So what
happened? I'm
still excited by technology, but I
believe, and
I'm here to make the case,that
we're letting it take us places that
we don't want to go.
Over
the past 15 years, I've
studied technologies of mobile communication and
I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young
and old, about
their plugged in lives.And
what I've found is
that our little devices, those
little devices in our pockets, are
so psychologically powerful that
they don't only change what we do, they
change who we are.Some
of the things we do now with our devices are
things that, only a few years ago, we
would have found odd or
disturbing, but
they've quickly come to seem familiar, just
how we do things.
So
just to take some quick examples: People
text or do email during
corporate board meetings. They
text and shop and go on Facebook during
classes, during presentations,actually
during all meetings. People
talk to me about the important new skill of
making eye contact while
you're texting. (Laughter)
People
explain to me that
it's hard, but that it can be done. Parents
text and do email at
breakfast and at dinner while
their children complainabout
not having their parents' full attention. But
then these same children deny
each other their full attention. This
is a recent shot of my
daughter and her friends being
together while
not being together. And
we even text at funerals. I
study this. We
remove ourselves from our
grief or from our revery and
we go into our phones.
Why
does this matter? It
matters to me because
I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble -- trouble
certainly in
how we relate to each other, but
also trouble in
how we relate to ourselves and
our capacity for self-reflection. We're
getting used to a new way of
being alone together. People
want to be with each other, but
also elsewhere -- connected
to all the different places they want to be. People
want to customize their lives. They
want to go in and out of all the places they are because
the thing that matters most to them is
control over where they put their attention. So
you want to go to that board meeting, but
you only want to pay attention to
the bits that interest you. And
some people think that's a good thing. But
you can end up hiding
from each other, even
as we're all constantly connected to each other.
A
50-year-old business man lamented
to me that
he feels he doesn't have colleagues anymore at work. When
he goes to work, he doesn't stop by to talk to anybody, he
doesn't call. And he
says he doesn't want to interrupt his colleagues because,
he says, "They're too busy on their email." But
then he stops himself and
he says, "You know, I'm not telling you the truth. I'm
the one who doesn't want to be interrupted. I
think I should want to, but
actually I'd rather just do things on my Blackberry."
Across
the generations, I see
that people can't get enough of each other, if
and only if they
can have each other at a distance, in
amounts they can control. I call
it the Goldilocks effect: not
too close, not too far, just
right. But
what might feel just right for
that middle-aged executive can
be a problem for an adolescent who
needs to develop face-to-face relationships. An
18-year-old boy who
uses texting for almost everything says
to me wistfully, "Someday,
someday, but
certainly not now, I'd
like to learn how to have a conversation."
When
I ask people "What's
wrong with having a conversation?" People
say, "I'll tell you what's wrong with having a conversation. It
takes place in real time and
you can't control what you're going to say." So
that's the bottom line. Texting,
email, posting, all
of these things let
us present the self as we want to be. We
get to edit, and
that means we get to delete, and
that means we get to retouch, the
face, the voice, the
flesh, the body -- not
too little, not too much, just
right.
Human
relationships are
rich and they're messy and
they're demanding. And
we clean them up with technology. And
when we do, one
of the things that can happen is
that we sacrifice conversation for
mere connection. We
short-change ourselves. And
over time, we
seem to forget this, or we
seem to stop caring.
I was
caught off guard when
Stephen Colbert asked
me a profound question, a
profound question. He
said, "Don't all those little tweets, don't
all those little sips of
online communication, add
up to one big gulp of
real conversation?" My
answer was no, they
don't add up. Connecting
in sips may work for
gathering discreet bits of information, they
may work for saying, "I'm thinking about you," or
even for saying, "I love you," -- I
mean, look at how I felt when
I got that text from my daughter -- but
they don't really work for
learning about each other, for
really coming to know and understand each other. And
we use conversations with each other to
learn how to have conversations with
ourselves. So a
flight from conversation can
really matter because
it can compromise our
capacity for self-reflection. For
kids growing up, that
skill is the bedrock of development.
Over
and over I hear, "I
would rather text than talk." And
what I'm seeing is that
people get so used to being short-changed out
of real conversation, so
used to getting by with less,that
they've become almost willing to
dispense with people altogether. So
for example,many
people share with me this wish, that
some day a more advanced version of Siri, the
digital assistant on Apple's iPhone, will
be more like a best friend, someone
who will listenwhen
others won't. I
believe this wish reflects
a painful truth that
I've learned in the past 15 years. That
feeling that no one is listening to me is
very important in
our relationships with technology. That's
why it's so appealing to have
a Facebook page or a
Twitter feed -- so
many automatic listeners. And
the feeling that no one is listening to me make
us want to spend time with
machines that seem to care about us.
We're
developing robots, they
call them sociable robots, that
are specifically designed to be companions -- to
the elderly, to
our children, to
us. Have
we so lost confidence that
we will be there for each other? During
my research I
worked in nursing homes, and I
brought in these sociable robots that
were designed to give the elderly the
feeling that they were understood. And
one day I came in and a
woman who had lost a child was
talking to a robotin
the shape of a baby seal. It
seemed to be looking in her eyes. It
seemed to be following the conversation. It
comforted her. And
many people found this amazing.
But
that woman was trying to make sense of her life with
a machine that had no experienceof
the arc of a human life. That
robot put on a great show. And
we're vulnerable. People
experience pretend empathy as
though it were the real thing. So
during that moment when
that woman was
experiencing that pretend empathy, I was
thinking, "That robot can't empathize. It
doesn't face death. It
doesn't know life."
And
as that woman took comfort in
her robot companion, I didn't
find it amazing; I
found it one of the most wrenching, complicated moments in my
15 years of work. But
when I stepped back, I
felt myself at
the cold, hard center of a
perfect storm. We
expect more from technology and
less from each other. And I
ask myself, "Why
have things come to this?"
And I
believe it's because technology
appeals to us most where
we are most vulnerable.And
we are vulnerable. We're
lonely, but
we're afraid of intimacy. And
so from social networks to sociable robots, we're
designing technologies that
will give us the illusion of companionship without
the demands of friendship. We turn
to technology to help us feel connected in
ways we can comfortably control. But
we're not so comfortable. We
are not so much in control.
These
days, those phones in our pockets are
changing our minds and hearts because
they offer us three
gratifying fantasies. One,
that we can put our attention wherever
we want it to be; two,
that we will always be heard; and
three, that we will never have to be alone. And
that third idea, that
we will never have to be alone, is
central to changing our psyches.Because
the moment that people are alone, even
for a few seconds, they
become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they
reach for a device. Just
think of people at a checkout line or at
a red light. Being
alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved. And
so people try to solve it by connecting. But
here, connection is
more like a symptom than a cure. It
expresses, but it doesn't solve, an
underlying problem. But
more than a symptom, constant
connection is changing the
way people think of themselves. It's
shaping a new way of being.
The
best way to describe it is, I
share therefore I am. We
use technology to define ourselves by
sharing our thoughts and feelings even
as we're having them. So
before it was: I
have a feeling, I
want to make a call. Now
it's: I want to have a feeling, I
need to send a text. The
problem with this new regime of
"I share therefore I am" is
that, if we don't have connection, we
don't feel like ourselves. We
almost don't feel ourselves. So
what do we do? We connect more and more. But
in the process, we
set ourselves up to be isolated.
How do
you get from connection to isolation? You
end up isolated if
you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude, the
ability to be separate, to
gather yourself. Solitude
is where you find yourself so
that you can reach out to other people and
form real attachments. When
we don't have the capacity for solitude, we
turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in
order to feel alive. When
this happens, we're
not able to appreciate who they are. It's
as though we're using them as
spare parts to support
our fragile sense of self. We
slip into thinking that always being connected is
going to make us feel less alone. But
we're at risk,because
actually it's the opposite that's true. If
we're not able to be alone, we're
going to be more lonely. And
if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're
only going to know how
to be lonely.
When I
spoke at TED in 1996, reporting
on my studies of
the early virtual communities, I
said, "Those who make the most of
their lives on the screen come
to it in a spirit of self-reflection." And
that's what I'm calling for here, now: reflection
and, more than that, a conversation about
where our current use of technology may
be taking us, what
it might be costing us. We're
smitten with technology. And
we're afraid, like young lovers, that
too much talking might spoil the romance. But
it's time to talk. We
grew up with digital technology and
so we see it as all grown up. But
it's not, it's early days. There's
plenty of time for
us to reconsider how we use it, how
we build it. I'm
not suggesting that
we turn away from our devices, just
that we develop a more self-aware relationship with
them, with each other and
with ourselves.
I see
some first steps. Start
thinking of solitude as a
good thing. Make
room for it. Find
ways to demonstrate this as a
value to your children. Create
sacred spaces at home -- the
kitchen, the dining room -- and
reclaim them for conversation. Do
the same thing at work.At
work, we're so busy communicating that
we often don't have time to think, we
don't have time to talk, about
the things that really matter. Change
that. Most
important, we all really need to listen to each other, including
to the boring bits. Because
it's when we stumble or
hesitate or lose our words that
we reveal ourselves to each other.
Technology
is making a bid to
redefine human connection -- how
we care for each other,how
we care for ourselves -- but
it's also giving us the opportunity to
affirm our values and
our direction. I'm
optimistic. We
have everything we need to start. We
have each other. And
we have the greatest chance of success if
we recognize our vulnerability. That
we listenwhen
technology says it
will take something complicated and
promises something simpler.
So
in my work, I
hear that life is hard, relationships
are filled with risk. And
then there's technology -- simpler,
hopeful, optimistic,
ever-young. It's
like calling in the cavalry. An ad
campaign promises that
online and with avatars, you
can "Finally, love your friends love
your body, love your life, online
and with avatars." We're
drawn to virtual romance, to
computer games that seem like worlds, to
the idea that robots, robots, will
someday be our true companions. We
spend an evening on the social network instead
of going to the pub with friends.
But
our fantasies of substitution have
cost us. Now
we all need to focus on
the many, many ways technology
can lead us back to
our real lives, our own bodies, our
own communities, our
own politics, our
own planet. They
need us. Let's
talk about how
we can use digital technology, the
technology of our dreams, to
make this life the
life we can love.
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