Gadgetory

library today to talk to authors Stephen Johnson and sherry Turkle about technology I'm interested in technology because I'm not using the internet right now they've written books about technology whether technology is progressive or not what it's doing to us what it's doing to our minds and what it's doing to our society I think it should be an interesting talk also I'm hoping to get my copy of time so you guys are here to discuss each other's books and the concept of technology is technology for progress or progress and technology yeah particularly networks I think the way that networks are kind of steering us both as individuals and as friends and families and also then as societies and political organizations how far are we getting pushed in positive directions and how much do we need to kind of steer the ship in other directions something I saw kind of both of your books but that technology gets what technology wants I'm teasing one of the issues on the table I think is the degree to which it makes sense to have a technological determinist position and the degree to which we get to say not so fast not so fast and have a little bit more steering of the ship and saying that there are human purposes that may need to override some of the ways the technology would have it if technology were totally in control so you would both agree that technology wants something I think well I would say the technology has there's this kind of technical term of affordances right certain technologies are developed and they have kind of default settings where you know if you live in a society with television your political system will get more concerned with the way politicians look then society built around the written word but that doesn't mean we're slaves to the technology because one we can invent new technology and particularly with software it's incredibly malleable so we can always kind of change the rules of the software and two we make informed decisions as citizens or as governments or as corporations about what kinds of behavior and uses of the technology we want to encourage and what kinds we want to discourage and it's some sense what sherry is trying to point out is that there are ways in which we've started to use these new technologies that we seem to be kind of falling into that we need to just step back and say is everything we're doing here in the long run kind of good for us and are some of these usage patterns may be you know a mistake I think of it in terms of technological affordance and human vulnerability that technology makes certain things possible and we're very vulnerable to certain of those things that it makes possible but just because you're vulnerable doesn't mean that that's the direction you need to go you can get a little less vulnerable if you think something is bad for you so for example cars you know you drive them fast enough you get into really a lot of accidents you don't put in seatbelts you don't develop an infrastructure for rules of the road they can get you into a lot of trouble at a certain point you decide you know these cars let's think about how to make them safer let's think about how to design highway systems that will you know make it less likely that we get into accidents and I think over the course of hundreds of years you know I mean it doesn't happen overnight but you gradually develop those can't that kind of infrastructure for dealing with this new technology and I think the one of my favorite lines in my book actually is just because we just because we grew up with the internet we think that the Internet is all grown up yeah you know I when I when that line came to me I said that's it you know we have this sense that somehow what we have now is is that it's very early days and we're just at the beginning I think of thinking how we need to change it and shape it and mold it to make it conform to really what our social and psychological values are what we think the good life is yeah a line I'm sorry good well I was gonna say one of the things one of the problems we have is you know just as you start to have that informed conversation about what this new technology is going to enable us to do there's a new technology writing about this stuff you know between us for quite a long time and you know when you were first looking at you know muds yeah you know the expectations about what people were gonna do online you know it was so much of it was about creating kind of role-playing I didn't it identities for yourself and the idea of you know a social network graph and using social networks to share family photos with your you know extended family what was almost not on the you know kind of landscape then and so you know we do we have to kind of have this conversation fast because you know who knows what the next paradigm is going to be in five years from now I hope you don't mind you have a lot of myspace references in your book MySpace those are the days but you've got a lot of facebook too but it took a while to research your book obviously and this is this is moving very fast I really like this line that you're saying is talking about robots but we're delegating what was once loves labor changes the person who delegates and I thought that was interesting in juxtaposition to the idea that a network can make a lot of things very easy and warm media and quicker and this idea of loves labor that there might be just something that requires that the very quality of it is the labor yes well one of the one of the themes of my work when I subtitled the book why we expect more from technology and less from each other is that we are delegating both to sociable robots but also to social networks or displacing on to technology some of the things that were better done and face-to-face person-to-person to me sociable robotics to be your best friend to be in conversation about intimate things is the the ultimate the ultimate example of something that shouldn't be delegated because a sociable robot no matter how clever doesn't know about loss it doesn't know about love it doesn't know about thee it can know about it in a kind of way that really isn't a way of human meaning and experience so you know why if I want to talk about the loss of my mom I really don't want to go to a social robot no matter how much it knows how to make me feel that it knows what I'm talking about no matter how clever it is at doing that so that would be to me the ultimate example of technologies that are built to get me to delegate loves labor but I'm looking for love and I think we do similar things although less dramatically in social networks and I think that's a human vulnerability something that stuck out to me in your book related to that was that concept the example that sewer construction or the there's the foundation of the house that was and the sewer construction happening on that block would really mess up the house and dangerous to the inhabitants and he found out about that basically word of mouth or overhearing and it was you know lucky he overheard so what is the role for just talking face-to-face with your neighbors versus you know the peer network helping you with them well that's something I want to make pretty clear here so I'm actually not really arguing that the technology is driving this and in many ways I have the line in the book somewhere that you know the Internet is not the solution of these problems the Internet is just a role model like we can look at the way that the internet was built and the kind of kind of decision making in collaboration that went into the creation of the Internet and the way that the internet was designed and the kind of architecture of the internet and take that success story and say we can solve other kinds of problems many of them not involving technology and so it's not just about you know if we put everybody on Facebook the world will be better I don't think that's true at all and one of the places where this kind of pure networked philosophy I think works the best is precisely in local neighborhoods and communities because it is anchored in that kind of knowable community that face-to-face community and it may be augmented by new digital tools and by you know kind of pattern detection software and tools are allowing people to make decisions kind of you know online but it is embedded in the physical world of shared sidewalks and communities and that's the space actually that I'm most excited about it's a place where that technology is kind of layer it over the the kind of physical world in a really positive way not just being a kind of a layer that causes you to not pay attention to people and check your email while you're talking to them which I'm tempted to do now my leg is been vibrating this all tied up you guys get quoted so often sure especially see you because I I read a lot about how internet is you know making us lonely or doing this or that to us can you guys just talk about what how you see your work used and quoted versus what you would like people to take away from it I'm not a Luddite I really am not trying to take your toys away so whoever is watching this wherever you are Jerry wants you to have your toys keep your toys and I think that's very important because I think that by by calling a serious critique I mean also my book is fieldwork base and it's been 15 years it's as I'm reporting I'm reporting and I'm commenting on what I see but I'm not just reporting on the good I'm you know I'm reporting on things that disturb me I I I think that there's a a tendency to take a report that is critical or says look developmentally this could be a problem for kids or reports on kids describing problematic things and absolutely go ballistic so I've been reading some of the early reviews of Stephens book and some people like it some people like it a lot some people like it a little less but nobody says that ignorance watch how dairy waiting for that they're not going to yeah you know because it's a positive book and they might like it not more or less some people really love it some people like it a little bit less but they don't they're not furious and some people read my books at it I believe these reviews on Amazon it's terrifying what people say about me I mean really makes me think I get police protection from Amazon I mean yeah I mean there's something about and I think that's very interesting I mean to me to be serious about it I mean you know how does she how do she and I think that that is the reaction to you know I'm you know I put it out there I'm pretty self confident and I have all this work that went into it so I'm you know I'm I can take it but I think that's that is something that I would say about the reception of the book and what people say about the book is really where does that come from that's interesting because I got some surprising reactions from people being defensive just me saying that I wanted to leave the internet and taking that as an attack on them and feeling like they needed to defend or how they use the internet as if I was saying how dare you use the internet everybody should stop it's interesting that people take it so personally as it's as if you're attacking them yeah well I think it's very I think it's very important that we have serious work that critiques technology and your your you need to encourage that work and my professional career is to encumber I teach at MIT and try to encourage that work at MIT and other places and you don't want to you know what's interesting if when you write that work after a 15-year ramp-up you really do get was that old Saturday Night Live saying you know Jane you ignorant slut so I I'm happy you asked that question I think happy to have given a pretty honest answer now you should answer well I think the one thing about just to talk more about Sheree's experience the you know I think people want to see a critic of Technology as someone who is stuck in the old way of looking at things and hasn't you know fully embraced a new technology because they don't understand it and the great thing about Sherry's career is that she's been she's way ahead of everybody you know and she was sitting there and you know with Eliza in 1978 or whatever that was you know and and so she it's not like she's coming at it as a Luddite at all she's just coming right exactly from my perspective you know I agree there's no there's not a need in society for people to be optimistic about technology and the latest gadgets we have plenty of that well we don't have as a lot of optimism about our capacity as a society to solve important problems and come up with interesting new kind of collaborative architectures to solve those problems and we have this very pessimistic sense of how we're doing as a society on a lot of fronts it actually isn't warranted we have a lot of economic problems right now but we have a lot as I start the book with that kind of long list of kind of social health trends all of which have been steadily improving over the last thirty years in fact over the last hundred years for the most part and so I'm not trying to just be a cheerleader for technology and I think if I were to write a book just about technology I would have much more sherrystown in it which I think it's incredibly important I'm trying to say that there's actually a new vision of how change happens and the institutions that are responsible for that change that as I said is inspired by technology but it's not kind of reducible to it what do you think about me and what what can we be doing about these things that you're talking about both pros and well I I want to just address your leaving the internet I personally don't like talking about internet addiction because I think encourages people to say I have to leave the internet I have to throw away my phone I prefer to think of it in terms of our vulnerability to go not using our phones wisely and go into the kind of digital diet to get the balance right I think if you decide to leave the internet for a time of stepping back and reflection I think that's to the good but I hope actually that you use the time for reflection and kind of a resent ring and come back to the Internet to make the internet a better place for all of us so my that would be my hope for about how you use however long you stay away from the Internet so that's just my perspective I would say we missed you one the internet when we're having a huge party there and not really missing out yeah sherry and I are having a great time on the internet you would not believe what's going on there we go the one year I leave the internet everybody else a party thank you so much guys you