Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

I'm not a fan of Turkle. I've read her previous book and seen her TED Talks. I find she comes to egregious conclusions about how people interact with scant evidence. In this book, she argues that people are growing incapable of talking or having sophisticated conversations and that it's largely our digital technology that is creating this rift. There are several issues that I have with this book. The first is that it is clearly focused on upper-middle and upper-class people--the schools and coll [...]

I'm always conflicted about Sherry's books. She admits that she only studies a particular behavior, leaving out all of the other things that people do. So for this book, it was studying the ways that people use their phones to avoid conversations with others in person. Which is interesting, and she definitely made me think more about this topic.But as is typical, she fails to write about the other side, or recognize what happened in the past without phones. I've seen some surveys lately that sho [...]

People of the 21st century have been conditioned into thinking that their digital devices are necessary. These days nobody notices anymore that "funeral selfies" or "fail videos" are in extremely bad taste, and digital tech is spilling way too far into the world. People nowadays expect the instant gratification of a friendship but refuse to speak face-to-face or give up their phones AND sacrifice their digital crutches to meet a friend. Reclaiming Conversation is spot-on in explaining that with [...]

I have mixed feelings on this book. I definitely see the author's point and understand her perspective but I felt it had too much fear-mongering and digital paranoia and not enough balance with the benefits of technology. I read the first quarter of it carefully and then skimmed the remainder. I felt it was way too long to make rather simple points.

"From the early days I saw that computers offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the programs got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy."

This is a must read for those who own a device with a screen, a life with stories behind a screen- with a window into it through social media- and who have people in their life (in the same room!) with stories of their own to share. Some good quotes: "Technology enchants; it makes us forget what we know about life But in our eagerness, we forget our responsibility to the new, to the generation that follows us. It is for us to pass on the most precious thing we know how to do: talking to the next [...]

Put down your mobile phone and close your laptop, if you can. Our increasing reliance on non-verbal, virtual communications is not just altering how we work, it's fundamentally undermining how children learn empathy and transforming how families manage conflict. I'm not sure if I completely agree with everything Turkle argues, and at times she seems to rely too heavily on well-observed anecdotes rather than hard data. Still, our personal and collective attention spans seem to be shortening the m [...]

READ THIS BOOK - I mean it, seriously, EVERYONE read this book. This book takes on our technology addiction and its consequences for society in a very readable and understandable way. Turkle does not want us to get rid of technology, but to use it in a way that doesn't destroy our ability to talk to and listen to one another. She provides quotes from students, business people, and others who really make you stop and think. This is a phenomenal read and one I plan to push on everyone I can. It is [...]

Este libro me ha marcado y creo que será importante para mí en los años que vienen. Ha ordenado, razonado y puesto en palabras muchas impresiones y pensamientos que yo tenía acerca de cómo influye la tecnología (y, en particular, nuestro uso de los dispositivos móviles) en nuestra manera de relacionarnos. Me ha recordado a "The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains", solo que este era desde una perspectiva cognitiva y Sherry Turkle utiliza una variedad de métodos más próxi [...]

I want to come back and expand my thoughts. My mind is aswirl with quotes and thoughts and applications. "This is our paradox. When were are apart: hypervigilance. When we are together: inattention." alivingpencil/2016/01/07/r

(Maybe more like 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because this book is so important and necessary)This book examines the way society has turned away from one another as everyone has become more absorbed in digital devices. It really made me rethink my obsession with my phone/ social media and this past week I've been letting go of these things and I feel so much better. I'm sleeping better, I feel more free and light, and more creative At times this book wasn't quite what it set out to be and othe [...]

Varför är det fortfarande viktigt med samtal öga-mot-öga i det moderna samhället? Författaren och forskare visar på att ju mindre vi samtalar med varandra IRL desto mindre utvecklas vår empati. Hur kan vi vara förebilder för våra barn och vänner, kollegor? Hur kan vi skapa skärmfria platser och tillåta oss att få ha tråkigt ibland, och njuta av ensamhet och reflektion? Hur kan blotta närvaro av en mobiltelefon påverka vad vi pratar och inte pratar om under ett samtal? Detta och [...]

Finished this as a faculty read and changed my view of what we do in the classroom, but also how thoroughly damaging our embrace of technology has become to our sense of awareness and particularly our ability to communicate effectively and have empathy for others. Turkle shows how we are rarely fully "present" even in social settings as we're so distracted by technology - our phones and laptops. Turkle was famous "in the day" for her early work on gender equity and STEM, especially with computer [...]

I was incredibly impressed by this book at first. Sherry Turkle was hitting on so many of the things I fear are happening to people, particularly to children, due to the constant wired state of the world. One of the most important issues being that children can no longer deal with solitude, which is crucial for learning how to think on one's own and for knowing oneself period. So, I'm happily reading and reading, agreeing with so much being said, until I'm almost 30% through the book, at which t [...]

Through a lot of qualitative research, Turkle comes to a lot of solid conclusions about the value of face-to-face conversations in an age of technology. I'm not sure I would find many of her findings to be revelatory but rather more confirmations of ideas many of us already have as we rely on technology while also not wanting to maintain our dependence on it. Two complaints with the book. First, the majority of her research seems to be done with educated students and adults in privileged setting [...]

I desperately wanted to like this book but the author goes around in circles. Every chapter is the same: people bring their phone to the dinner table and it kills conversation; people argue through text and it kills empathy; people can't live without their phones and don't know what to do in moments of quiet without them. You'd get all of that if you read the first chapter. I ended up abandoning it halfway through. That said, I think the author's central thesis is quite a wise one: that mobile p [...]

I just feel like she went in with a forgone conclusion, did no real research, and then strung together tiny bits of data and stories to back up her preconceived bias.

I really liked the ideas that Turkle was presenting. I totally agree that conversation is dwindling and that we need to find new ways to work with students and work on their interpersonal skills because I do think that's important. I think that some of her points were a bit much and she got a little dramatic. I also think that some points were a bit hypocritical and can be hard to reconcile with the times that she agrees with technology.

This was a worldview-changing book with lessons for me as a mom, teacher, friend, and wife. Its frequent foundations in the words of Thoreau remind me that the root of the solution to the problem Turkle presents is simplicity and solitude. Loved this important book!

Thought provoking look at the ways in which our digital culture divides us while giving us the illusion of connection

I agreed with the author's point- that we have let technology take over many aspects of our lives to the extent that we are excluding people and relationships. Ok, sure. But she could have stated this in a LOT less than 362 pages of mostly anecdotal evidence (that all ended up sounding pretty much the same) and random statistics. Seriously, if there were ever a book written to skim this is it. At the same time I was led to think carefully about how often I'm distracted by my phone, especially in [...]

I'm just going to go ahead and say this is such an important book for our time and you need to read it. Turkle has studied the effects of media on humans for thirty years and she brings that considerable perspective to examining the breakdown of conversation, empathy and connection in our modern society. I consider myself pretty thoughtful about media consumption, but Turkle revealed many things that I hadn't even realized about myself and the way media (particularly the smartphone) has changed [...]

5 starsVery good book. Quite interesting too. The author makes valid points. Hope we will be able to talk to others face to face more often.

Thought-provoking and relevant. It took me quite a while to get through it because I kept having to stop and reflect on how her points meshed with my experiences. She raises a lot of good questions about what it means to be a human being and a member of society. I very much recommend it. Beyond that, I have so much to say that I really need to organize it into an essay.

Very interesting. After a while it started to get redundant, more anecdotes than I felt were necessary, belaboring the point until I actually rolled my eyes. It felt like some stuff was stretched or padded to get a page count - BUT despite all that the ideas were good & necessary. I am glad I read it.

Reclaiming Conversation is a very instructive and complicated book. I found it a little difficult to understand in places, but enjoyed reading about the isolation that the current generation has created through the digital age. Just a shame that people do not actually spend time together anymore. I remember the days when we played outside and stayed out till our parents called us ind not on our phones, which did not exist in those days. We really communicated then with people in person. I feel s [...]

Turkle's thesis (backed up by some, but not abundant, research) is that we are losing our empathic skills because we communicate excessively through computers, particularly children. Unfortunately, this book (abandoned 25% of the way through) is an unfortunate blend of occasional research nugget, extensive (and presumably selective) quoting from interviews, and the author's strong opinions stated as fact. I'm with Turkle: social networking sites are built to broadcast, which is antithetical to t [...]

The title of this book intrigued me because I fear that I have become too reliant on my cellphone, too engrossed in social media, and too dependent on technology. The book helped elucidate preexisting concerns I had about my own use of digital communication. Much of it isn't brand new information, but rather a clever and research-based model of what lay in my head not wanting to be rustled up. I think anyone with young kids or anyone who finds that their phone may be detracting from interpersona [...]

3 1/2 stars. An important area to think about. Some parts of this book were excellent and very thought provoking (4 stars). Other parts were long winded and had too many examples (3 stars).

This woman just preaches and rants. I swear she says the same stuff over and over and over. I thought I'd like this book because of the title, but, boy, was I wrong.