Turkle, S. (2010). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books.

For educators, technology has been a mixed blessing: on the good side, instant access to numerous databases, Internet searching, online class management systems, sophisticated word processing programs, streaming video; on the bad side, students want quick results, have little patience for the time it takes to think and write well (and then resort to plagiarizing), get easily distracted in class by text messages and cell calls, and prefer video and graphic texts to novel and essay reading.

Though Sherry Turkle, MIT professor of social sciences and technology with training as a clinical psychologist, doesn’t directly speak to writing teachers in her latest critique of technology, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, her insights into the networked lives of young people may have implications for how they perform in class, such as their inability to concentrate or the limited time offline they have to think and write. In fact, Turkle argues that “no matter how difficult, it is time to look again at the virtues of solitude, deliberateness, and living fully in the moment.” Writing teachers know that focus, deliberation, attention, and uninterrupted time with one’s ideas are critical for developing good writing skills.

Much of her book is a fascinating and disturbing chronicle of what she believes networked life is doing to people: the 18-year old who thinks it would be good to learn how to talk on the phone instead of relying on text messaging; the college student whose studies suffer from more than 12 hours a day spent on online gaming and surfing; mourners texting during a funeral because they can’t afford to be out of touch with the office; Facebook devotees who agonize over the online profile they think will attract the most “friends”; and children at a museum science exhibit disappointed that a robotic turtle has not replaced the live one from the Galapagos Islands. Teachers can add their own vexing examples of students whose attention is routinely diverted in class by text messaging, e-mailing, and cell phones.

Alone Together is divided into two sections: “The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies” and “Networked: In Intimacy, New Solicitudes.” Turkle documents how far developers and advocates of robots have gone in pushing them to take the place of babysitters or elderly attendants in nursing homes. Through extensive interviews and numerous observation sessions in MIT labs, Turkle discovers that people can grow very attached to robots, feel genuine concern if the robot seems depressed (low batteries, software glitches); and miss the robot if it is taken away. Her main concern is that robots would start to replace people in certain human services jobs, yet could not evaluate nor respond to complex human emotions.

In the second and more relevant section for writing instructors, Turkle looks at the unintended consequences of our deepening involvement with networked environments: inability to separate work time and private time, a preference for text messaging over in-person and/or telephone exchanges (especially true for adolescents), invasion of privacy (leading tragically to a recent college student’s suicide when his romantic encounter was videoed and posted online), endangering yourself and others by driving while texting, and the loss of concentration and focus that come with multitasking.

In her own classroom, Turkle tried to eliminate all electronic devices but had to give in after numerous complaints from students saying they couldn’t work without their laptops, cell phones, and text message devices. In reality, her students were routinely on Facebook or YouTube, downloading music, or shopping online during lectures, and when queried, said that it didn’t bother their attention. One colleague noted that students of his who bring laptops to class don’t do as well as those without them; another, however, countered that students are adults and should not be dictated to about technology.

Turkle asks the reader not to abandon technology, but to consider how its intrusive, demanding, and addictive aspects negatively affect social relations and personal integrity, and in the case of educators, attentiveness and engagement in class. She is a persuasive writer, drawing on her own sharp observations about what technology is doing to us. Not everyone will agree with her conclusions and remedies; still, she is one of only a very few willing to challenge the powerful technological hegemony and raise questions about whether the overly hyped connectivity is, in fact, making people more isolated, more distracted, more disconnected. In the case of students, distracted and disconnected are not qualities associated with academic success.

Craig Machado is ESL program director at Norwalk Community College. In 2005, the program was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for outstanding work in the area of developmental English.