Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at M.I.T wrote this wonderful article in the NYT where she says that we’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.”
Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also
elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our
lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we
value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten
used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.
We live in a technological universe in which we are always
communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere
connection.
At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work
executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on
Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me
about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with
someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.
