Alone Together: the Robotic Movment
A Response to Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together: The Robotic Movement”
In “Alone Together: The Robotic Movement,” Sherry Turkle explains some of the negative effects that robots are having on our lives. She also explains how they can have a negative effect on our daily lives without us even noticing. I am someone who knows a great deal about technology, however I had no idea that close human-robot interaction was happening at such an inappropriate level. There are many different examples Turkle uses in the article, however, I will only talk about two. I agree with Turkle not only that there are ethical problems with human-robot interaction but also that a lot of other forms of technology might be doing more harm than good.
To begin with, I agree with Turkle that human-robot interaction raises many ethical issues. For example, she describes a situation in a museum when she was presented with the question, “Do you care if the turtle is alive?” (Turkle 323). Most people would actually prefer a robot in the place of an animal that is alive because it would be less boring. Immediately, I saw which direction Turkle was taking this. She digs deeper into that concept. As her journey became better known, Turkle was directed to a book Love and Sex With Robots. Even the title of this book gets me a bit nervous. The book states “Robots are, of course, ‘other’ but in many ways, better. No cheating. No heart break” (Turkle 324). This particular quote makes me upset. I don’t understand how people can think this way. Granted, not everyone has the same values and morals as I do, however I would hope that some people would treat this with more emotion. Having intimate relations with someone is something that I take very seriously, and to think that people are using robots as a substitute makes me sick. How can people be so detached from their emotions to think that a robot would be capable of filling a gap in their relationship? One particular woman said she would
In “Alone Together: The Robotic Movement,” Sherry Turkle explains some of the negative effects that robots are having on our lives. She also explains how they can have a negative effect on our daily lives without us even noticing. I am someone who knows a great deal about technology, however I had no idea that close human-robot interaction was happening at such an inappropriate level. There are many different examples Turkle uses in the article, however, I will only talk about two. I agree with Turkle not only that there are ethical problems with human-robot interaction but also that a lot of other forms of technology might be doing more harm than good.
To begin with, I agree with Turkle that human-robot interaction raises many ethical issues. For example, she describes a situation in a museum when she was presented with the question, “Do you care if the turtle is alive?” (Turkle 323). Most people would actually prefer a robot in the place of an animal that is alive because it would be less boring. Immediately, I saw which direction Turkle was taking this. She digs deeper into that concept. As her journey became better known, Turkle was directed to a book Love and Sex With Robots. Even the title of this book gets me a bit nervous. The book states “Robots are, of course, ‘other’ but in many ways, better. No cheating. No heart break” (Turkle 324). This particular quote makes me upset. I don’t understand how people can think this way. Granted, not everyone has the same values and morals as I do, however I would hope that some people would treat this with more emotion. Having intimate relations with someone is something that I take very seriously, and to think that people are using robots as a substitute makes me sick. How can people be so detached from their emotions to think that a robot would be capable of filling a gap in their relationship? One particular woman said she would
Cited: Turkle, Sherry. “Alone Together: The Robotic Movement” Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other 2011: pp. 3-13. Rpt. in Writing in the Disciplines. Ed. Mary Lynch Kennedy and William J. Kennedy. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012. 322-30. Print.