Partial preview of the text
Download Always on always on you: the tethered self and more Summaries Media Laws and Ethics in PDF only on Docsity!
[Forthcoming in Handbook of Mobile Communications and Social Change, James Katz (ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] 8/24/06 Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self Sherry Turkle In the mid-1990s, a group of young researchers at the MIT Media Lab carried computers and radio transmitters in their backpacks, keyboards in their pockets, and digital displays embedded in their eyeglass frames.’ Always on the Internet, they called themselves “cyborgs.” The cyborgs seemed at a remove from their bodies. When their burdensome technology cut into their skin, causing lesions and then scar tissue, they were indifferent. When their encumbrances led them to be taken for the physically disabled, they patiently provided explanations. They were learning to walk and talk as new creatures, learning to inhabit their own bodies all over again, and yet ina way, they were fading away, bleeding out onto the Net. Their experiment was both a re- embodiment, a prosthetic consummation, and a disembodiment: a disappearance of their bodies into still-nascent computational spaces. TT have studied relational artifacts in the lives of children and the elderly since 1997, beginning with the simple Tamagotchis that were available at every toy store to Kismet and Cog, advanced robots at the MIT Antificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Paro, a seal-like creature designed specifically for therapeutic purposes. Along the way there have been Furbies, AIBOS, and My Real Babies, the latter a baby doll that like the Paro has changing inner states that respond to the quality of its haman care. Over 250 subjects have been involved in these studies. My investigations of computer-mediated communication date from the mid- 1980s and have followed the media from e-mail, primitive virtual communities, and Web-based chat to cell technology, instant messaging, and social networking. Over 400 subjects have been involved in these studies. My work was done in Boston and Cambridge and their surrounding suburbs. The work on robotics investigated children and seniors from a range of ethnicities and social classes. This was possible because in every case I was providing robots and other relational artifacts to my informants. In the case of the work on communications technology, I spoke to people, children, adolescents, and adults, who already had computers, Web access, mobile phones, BlackBerries, etc. This necessarily makes my claims about their lives in the always-on/always-on-you culture not necessarily generalizable outside of the social class currently wealthy enough to afford such things. This essay expands on themes explored in previous writing. Portions of this essay appeared in Turkle (2006b, 2006c). Tarkle_Afways On for Katz 8.24.06 doe/ p. 1 
