Sherry Turkle Thanks for this. I preordered it. It comes out Tuesday. I'm still slowly picking my way through Second Self and despite the fact that it was written over 30 years ago, the insights in it about how children and adults interact with computers (and by "computers" we're talking "computers before the Apple II") are positively spine-tingling. Alone Together is probably the best book of the six or seven I've read about how humans interact with the Internet; every single other book name-checks her at some point and with good reason. It reminded me, though, of how much I hate Jonathan Franzen. I doubt he's read anything else Sherry Turkle has written. His take on Alone Together seems to be a refutation of Michiko Kakutani's review, also in the NYT. Worth noting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiko_Kakutani It's dreary to me how researchers are constantly pilloried by reviewers for not solving the problems they discover, and then when they make an effort, it's always somehow wrong. Franzen's the kind of guy who would argue Silent Spring was unrealistic because DDT would never be banned, or Unsafe at Any Speed was preposterous because the automobile industry would never adopt shoulder belts. Especially when this is the argument: It's called CPM, yo. raise the cost per click and the number of clicks required diminishes proportionally. Here's why: Next bloody paragraph. I'll read the Turkle book and report back. I'm most of the way through A Prayer for Owen Meany, realistically the last legit bl00's review. After that I'll have to figure out if I feel like subjecting people to book reviews of things they didn't suggest. This seems as good a place to start as any. I won't be reading any Jonathan Franzen.Writer Jonathan Franzen has called her "the stupidest person in New York"[9] and an "international embarrassment",[10] despite her praise for Franzen's recent novel, Purity (Kakutani is actually mentioned within the novel, on p. 191)
She writes approvingly of a smartphone interface that “instead of encouraging us to stay connected as long as possible, would encourage us to disengage.” But an interface like this would threaten almost every business model in Silicon Valley, where enormous market capitalizations are predicated on keeping consumers riveted to their devices.
Matthew Crawford, in “The World Beyond Your Head,” contrasts the world of a “peon” airport lounge — saturated in advertising, filled with mesmerizing screens — with the quiet, ad-free world of a business lounge: “To engage in playful, inventive thinking, and possibly create wealth for oneself during those idle hours spent at an airport, requires silence. But other people’s minds, over in the peon lounge (or at the bus stop), can be treated as a resource — a standing reserve of purchasing power.”