How Computers Change the Way We Think.

In Sherry Turkle’s essay How Computers Changed the Way We Think, she said “we have to ask, as educators and citizens, whether current technology is leading us in directions that server our human purpose”. She goes on to say that “these questions are not technical; but social, moral and political”. In this essay I will discuss these questions and what concerned her the most. Privacy on the web is, I feel, one of the biggest issues today that. You cannot click on a link or search on Google without “cookies” being saved on your computer and then sent off to who knows where and saved again. Those tracking cookies hold an awful lot of information and most of it is private. Turkle wrote “privacy is a right”, and she’s right! It our constitutional right to have our privacy and with the government and hackers, identity thief’s and company employees invading that privacy our rights are being violated every day. Turkel, as well as myself, is very concerned with trying to educate students in the world of “silent surveillance” so that they can understand more about it and what it really means. Kids as well as young adults have become overly obsessed with online games and chat rooms, especially if they are able to create a form of themselves such as an Avatar or alter ego. These games and rooms offer a place for “identity play”. Now identity play is very good for the development of children, but when is it going too far? Turkle believes that creating too many selves may “grow up with too little experience of how to share their real feelings”. If an avatar growing a farm with other avatars is the majority of the child’s social playtime than I would have to agree with Turkle. I know quite a few parents who allow their children to play on the computer for hours on end and others who don’t allow the child to go online other than to do homework. Both sets of children act and interact very differently. I feel that it is our moral responsibility to give our children,