Title:

Flight From Conversation

Author:

Sherry Turkle

Summary:

In Sherry Turkle’s article entitled “Flight From Conversation,” she claims that we have
lost the skills of conversation and replaced it with connection through text and social media.
Turkle gives a constant example to support her idea, she states that “Face-to-face conversation
unfolds slowly. It teaches patience, when we communicate on our digital devices, we learn
different habits.” However, she says that we should always practice ourselves for conversation
both at home and workplace. She ends her article by giving us a challenge, “So I say, look up,
look at one another, and lets start the conversation.”

Reaction:

In this article, “Flight From Conversation,” I really agree to Sherry Turkle’s a lot of
points regarding to the lack of communication skills in today’s society. Technology has a great
impact on our social interaction nowadays. People are often on their cellular devices during
classes, presentation and etc. that’s why we lost the face to face conversation.

Turkle uses ethos and establishes her credibility in her argument by stating how long she
has been studying how we communicate with technology and how many people she has
interviewed about the subject. She states that she has been studying this subject for the past 15
years. This establishes her credibility because it shows that she has had a lot of experience with
the subject and is very knowledgeable on it. It also shows that she has done research spanning
over an extensive period of time. In the past 15 years, the ways we communicate through
technology have changed immensely and she has been studying the changes as they were
happening. Turkle also states that she interviewed hundreds of people of all ages and
circumstances. This shows that she was able to get a general consensus on the subject and her
data isn’t skewed or biased.

I also agreed on Sherry Turkle’s one said, ‘Technological world brings us together but
also brings us apart from the real world.” This can cause many problems between friends and
colleagues and can lead to cyber bullying.

Technology has always been there for us whenever we are lonely. However, we do not
see that technology has caused us to be lonely. If we don’t have the capacity to be alone, we are
going to be lonelier.
 Technology has made us independent. Being alone and loneliness is not the same. I am
guilty of being one of those people who go to other people because I do not want to be alone.
However, we need to be able to handle the capacity of being alone.

“We accept more from technology and less from one another and seen increasingly
drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without demands of
relationship. “I think this quite perfectly describes many people in our culture which is sad.
People need to build meaningful relationship with others to succeed in life.

It is clear to say that technology has fully impacted our lives. Sherry Turkle fully
explained and made great parts how technology has affected ways of communicating through
using many real life examples to support her ideas.