Quotes from Sherry Turkle

The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this "the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking." Von Kleist quotes the French proverb that "appetite comes from eating" and observes that it is equally the case that "ideas come from speaking." The best thoughts, in his view, can be almost unintelligible as they emerge; what matters most is risky, thrilling conversation as a crucible for discovery.

When you depend on the computer to remember your past, you focused on whatever past is kept on the computer.

Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation.

Sometimes a citizenry should not simply "be good". You have to leave space for dissent, real dissent.

The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought.

To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, to defer going "elsewhere" at least some of the time.

Texting is more direct. You don't have to use conversation filler.

The computer offered the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

What do we forget when we talk to machines? We forget what is special about being human. We forget what it means to have authentic conversation. Machines are programmed to have conversations "as if" they understood what the conversation is about. So when we talk to them, we, too, are reduced and confined to the "as if.

But this is not a book about robots. Rather, it is about how we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face.

As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.

These days, students struggle with conversation. What makes sense is to engage them in it. The more you think about educational technology, with all its bells and whistles, the more you circle back to the simple power of conversation.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

The new technologies allow us to "dial down" human contact, to titrate its nature and extent.

As adults, we can develop and change our opinions. In childhood, we establish the truth of our hearts.

Mobile technology is here to stay, along with all the wonders it brings. Yet it is time for us to consider how it may get in the way of other things we hold dear—and how once we recognize this, we can take action: We can both redesign technology and change how we bring it into our lives. A

We are psychologically programmed not only to nurture what we love but to love what we nurture.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

Over time, we transform a collection of parts into a comprehension of wholes.

if we don't have experience with solitude—and this is often the case today—we start to equate loneliness and solitude.

When people turn other people into selfobjects, they are trying to turn a person into a kind of spare part.

AIBO permits something different: attachment without responsibility.

We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we're with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves