Reaction Paper to Sherry Turkle’s “Connected, but alone?

Amazement to disappointment. Communication starts where there’s an

exchange of information between two or more person. Conversation is the most
common form of communication. It is an informal exchange of ideas by spoken words.
As the conversation gets deeper, the persons involved will have a stronger bond, they
will feel connected to each other. Conversation is essential in communicating for
human-being. With the rapid change brought by technology, communication takes a
different form. It can be in a form of calls, e-mails, videos, text messages and others.
Most people today use these forms to communicate with each other. It is easier today to
stay in touch with their loved ones. They can call, texts and even have a video call
through their desktops, laptops, tablets or on their smartphones, but when you meet
them face-to-face, do we still feel the excitement? Are we really still connected or it just
feels better when you communicate with them from afar? Which feels better? The hug
from your loved ones or the fast connection of your mobile phone?

Alone together. What Sherry Turkle said on her talk at TEDTalks last 2012 was
already an issue that time and it became worse up to this time. She said on her talk that
technology is taking us places we don’t want to go which I strongly agree since I
became a witness to it with my own family. Back then, my father won’t allow me to use
my phone when we’re at the dining table, but now, he uses his phone while we were
eating. There’s also a time where we gather at our ancestral house but everyone is
busy looking at their phones typing, scrolling up and down and even having phone calls
with others and I thought “What’s the use of this family gathering when we’re just here
holding our phones and not talking to each other personally or face-to-face?”. It pains
me to see that these devices are separating us, not physically but mentally and
emotionally, making a barrier to communicate and worse, making us fight over silly
things. This is what it feels like being together while not being together. You are
together physically, but not together in other aspects.

Unmasking the user. Technology lets us present the self as we want others to
see it. These features can be found on social media sites like facebook, twitter,
Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and etc.. In return, Technology isolates us from meeting
someone physically making us feel more comfortable talking to strangers (chatrooms),
wasting much time with our device than starting a conversation with our family or close
friends that are on our side. As part of the new generation, for me, it is easier to talk to a
stranger to talk to your friends and family. I find comfort to others which I don’t really
know because they won't judge you because they don’t personally know you compared
to the person you really know. I open myself more to the others than to my friends. It is
because I have some trust issues on the people surrounding me. Nobody would listen
to you, and if they do, they would just think that you’re just being overreacting or over-
thinking to things as if like you’re talking nonsense or crazy in the membrane. The
problem in today’s generation is that people are too caught up with the power of
technology that they forgot how would other people feel. Wearing a thick mask to your
comrade but unmasking yourself to a stranger.

The ugly truth. As the famous saying goes “No man is an island” humans are
not capable of living alone but because of this integration, humans find companionship
through artificial intelligence. It is quite predictable that what Sherry Turkle said about
robot companions and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) would come true because as the time
passes by, inventors are thinking of a new way of making human life easier or making
humans lazier from one generation to another generation. There’s SIRI (apple), Cortana
(windows) and Alexa (amazon) where they can help you with your device and an
artificial companion. But what if you don’t have any other person to talk to aside of the
A.I. that is in front you, would you still blame the technology or yourself for not making
any change as early as today? You want to keep the traditional way of communicating
and that’s through conversation but no one wants to converse with you because they
are too engaged in typing, tweeting, hitting the like button, watching vlogs, and etc.
Would you let them isolate you and would left you feel alone? The only thing that you
could do now is to adapt to all these changes of you will be left out and you can’t relate
to what they’re all talking about. If you don’t adapt to these changes, you will be bullied,
stereotyped or called ignorantly. You need to edit your feed, timeline, or wall to
something ‘aesthetic’ or you will be called ‘jejemon’. You need to have some nice music
in your phone so others will not criticize it. You need to adapt through all these just to fit
into the society. Those who don’t adapt to the changes that are happening now will
have the worst things in life. We live in a society where confidence in the face is valued
more than confidence in intelligence. This is the new generation, you can’t change it
even if you say that change must start within you. The generation now is seeking for
something easy and if they don’t find it, they will feel depressed and post it on the
internet, well, in fact, nothing in life comes easy and for those problem having simple
solutions, humans tend to make it complicated. If you want to share your feelings, go
talk to someone. If you want to vent out, go talk to someone. If you want to have fun, go
talk to someone. The key for a healthy conversation is talking. But it is easier said than
done. Some people think that it’s easy to talk to someone in person but actually, it’s not
but maybe if you think alike it could be possible but if not, then it’s best to talk to a
stranger.

An eye-opener for the sightless. There may be a reason where some users
use the internet or the technology in general, like a drug, making them so high that they
forgot their family, friends or the people surrounding them but they must not forget that
what the technology is giving them now is just temporary and nothing beats a good
conversation where you can’t edit what you said and you just have to be true to
everyone even if you know that you were wrong because humans are made to be
flawed, not flawless. The video is somewhat good as a wake-up call for those who are
blind or naive needs. What she’s pointing out is the truth, even if we deny it, the
evidence is really showing. We admire these innovations because we need to ride along
to the trend where our wants became our needs. It may sounds painful, we felt the
impression of connection that technology has brought to us but in reality, we are deeply
alone. The technology turned us into less of a human, modifying us into dumber,
helpless and making us worse than ever. We need to wake up and accept that we are
damaged and we need attention that didn’t come from scraps and metals but must be in
form of flesh that has warmth in it and we need to turn our attention to the real thing
before it’s too late. We need to stop depending all our needs to a computer before it
takes over us.

Submitted by: Jamille P. Icalina, BSA-1

Submitted to: Ms. Trina Claire Ampalayo