Cox 1

Abby Cox

Mrs. Johnson-Owen

CCP 101,

1 Dec. 2020

A Deeper Look Into Sherry Turkle’s Speech, “Connected, but Alone?”

In her first TED Talk in 1996, Sherry Turkle expressed her hopeful feelings about

technology and how it would positively impact the word. Turkle looked to the future with

excitement about how we could “use what we learned in the virtual world . . .to live better lives

in the real world.” Advanced technology was a relatively new subject during this time, and we

had not yet gained a full grasp of how it would affect our everyday lives. Turkle, especially,

believed that the internet was capable of changing the world and helping us to learn more about

ourselves. As time went on and we began to understand the roles of these devices in our lives,

Turkle's stance began to change. In her next TED Talk in 2012, she expressed a completely

different view about technology than she had in her previous speech. Turkle shared in her

speech, “Connected, but Alone?” how “we're letting [technology] take us places that we don't

want to go”. She shared that instead of learning more about ourselves through technology, we are

taking away from what we already have. Specifically, we are losing important communication

skills and the acceptance of solitude, which is harming our society. Now, instead of looking at

technology as a hopeful innovation, she sees it as if it is harming parts of our society. Turkle's

views on technology in 1996 are contradictory to her beliefs in 2012.

Nowadays, using our devices in social situations is normal, but there was once a time

where it was not. Our devices are now small enough to fit in our pockets and we seem to never

be without them. Turkle lists examples of some of the places that you would see this, “People
 Cox 1

text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during

classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings.” It is now a social norm for people to

stare into their phones, and we tend to not think much of it. As Turkle puts it, our society has

found a way to be “alone together” meaning that, “people want to be with each other, but also

elsewhere -- connected to all the different places they want to be.” We are physically together,

but alone in the separate world of our phones. This is the exact reason why you see such a large

number of people on their devices today. It has not always been this way due to the fact that we

had not yet discovered the power of connection through technology. The power of connection is

actually disconnecting us from social situations, nowadays more than ever.

Turkle suggests that in order to solve the problems we are seeing with technology, we

need to start recovering what it took from us. We need to look at our lives and begin to form

ways to recover what we have lost to technology. Part of the reason we use technology is to

escape being alone - something that we see as a problem that needs to be solved. Turkle believes

that we need to accept solitude, for when we are alone we desperately search for somebody or

something to stop that feeling. This actually makes us more lonely and only by accepting the

idea of being alone, can we remove that feeling of panic. Furthermore, technology has stolen true

communication from us. Turkle explains how “we use conversations with each other to learn

how to have conversations with ourselves” and when we begin to trade conversations for

connections, we “compromise our capacity for self-reflection.” We need to reclaim true

communication, for it is vitally important to who we are. We need to take back our time to sit

down and talk to each other without the ability to control, edit, and delete what we want to say.

By reflecting on how technology has changed us for the worse, we can learn how to take back

what we have lost, including solitude and communication.

 Cox 1

Glenn Greenwald’s Opinion on Privacy and Surveillance

In a 2014 TED Talk entitled “Why Privacy Matters”, Glenn Greenwald assessed the idea

of privacy and surveillance. He continued to refer to the phrase “if you don’t do anything wrong,

then you’ve got nothing to hide” in terms of privacy, specifically on the internet. Some would

believe that you only care about your privacy if you have something to hide. Pointing out how

this is simply not true, Greenwald explains, “We make judgments every single day about . . . the

kinds of things that we say and think and do that we don't want anyone else to know about.

People can very easily in words claim that they don't value their privacy, but their actions negate

the authenticity of that belief.” Everybody has information in their life that they want to keep

private, even if they have not done anything wrong. We all value our privacy, therefore when our

private information comes into the public eye through the internet, there is a valid reason to care.

Greenwald points out that the people who claim they have nothing to hide “put passwords on

their email and their social media accounts, they put locks on their bedroom and bathroom

doors”, which are all steps to protect their privacy. No matter if you do or do not have things to

hide, everyone cares about their privacy.

Surveillance can be used to keep people from standing out against issues in hopes of

protecting their privacy. Greenwald introduces an implicit bargain: “If you're willing to render

yourself sufficiently harmless, sufficiently unthreatening to those who wield political power, then

and only then can you be free of the dangers of surveillance.” In other words, If you show that

you are not a threat to someone in power, you will not be under surveillance and you will reclaim

your privacy. The problem with this is that they are using your privacy to blackmail you into

submitting to them. You are giving up the ability to stand against something and to make a

change. For example, Greenwald revealed, “. . . the fact that there are other people who are
 Cox 1

willing to and able to resist and be adversarial to those in power — dissidents and journalists and

activists and a whole range of others — is something that brings us all collective good that we

should want to preserve.” Powerful politicians fear people who fight back, so they use

surveillance and invasions of privacy as a way to stop them

The purpose of surveillance is not to catch somebody after they have done something

wrong, but to prevent them from doing it in the first place. When people know they are being

watched, they act and behave differently then how they would if they were alone. Greenwald

quoted Rosa Luxemburg, a renowned socialist activist, who said, “He who does not move does

not notice his chains.” In terms of privacy and surveillance, this means that surveillance confines

us to only do things that we are okay with other people seeing, without realizing that it changes

how we act. We do not realize our behavioral choices are confined by the chains of surveillance.

When we are in the comfort of our own privacy, we are free to do things without judgment, but

freedom. Then, when we venture into the public eye, we do only what is acceptable. This

transition is not something we notice though, relating to Luxemburg’s reference to how you do

not notice you are wearing chains until you move. Surveillance is a chain that confines how you

behave in a public setting without you even realizing.

 Cox 1

Works Cited

Turkle, Sherry. “Connected, but Alone?” TED, Feb. 2012,

www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_connected_but_alone/transcript?language=en.

Accessed 1 Dec. 2020

Greenwald, Glenn. “Why Privacy Matters” TED, Oct. 2014,

https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en.

Accessed 3 Dec. 2020