Turkle and Gopnik

Last Updated: 25 May 2023

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Connecting points for Turkle and Gopnik “What changed? That James story helps supply the key. It was trains and telegrams. The railroad ended isolation, and packed the metropolis with people whose work was defined by a complicated network of social obligations. “ (Gopnik 157). | “She confined that she would trade in her boyfriend ‘for a sophisticated Japanese robot’ if the robot would produce what she called “caring environment”… I would be happy to produce the illusion that there is somebody really with me… A responsive robot even exhibited scripted behavior, seemed better to her than he demanding boyfriend” (Turkle 269). In both passages the authors discuss how technology can be very convenient for us. Gopnik discusses how trains and telegrams make it easier for people to get where they need to and communicate. However, trains brought over crowding to the cities and telegrams created a sense of separation because now people did not have to actually go and see each other. Turkle also talks about the convenience that comes with technology. When she was talking to a female that said that she would not mind a robot boyfriend because it would help her not to be lonely but unlike a real one it she would not have to tend to their demands. The real question, I saw was not “Why this friend? ” but, “Why this fiction? ” Why as Olivia had seen so clearly, are grownups in New York so busy, and so obsessed with the language of busyness that it dominants their conversation? … grabbing lunch instead of sitting down and exchanging intimacies”( Gopnik 156). | “Do you care that the turtle is alive?... A ten year old girl told me that she would prefer a robot turtle because aliveness comes with aesthetic inconvenience… “For what the turtles do, you didn’t have to have live ones. ”(Turkle 265-266) |

Both authors have made assumptions for their essays based on youth’s point of view . Gopnik uses his daughter’s imaginary friend to show how things are in the busy life of a New York. Technology has made New Yorkers so busy that they rather “talk to the person later” instead of sitting down and having actual conversation. Turkle also uses children to explain her point. At the zoo with children she explains how they said that they rather see a mechanical turtle because actual interaction with a turtle is not needed if the fake one can do the same thing.

Both of these are examples of how technology is now seen as equal to physical bonding. “Busyness is felt so intently here because we are both crowded and overloaded. We exit the apartment into a still dense nineteenth century grid of street corners and restaurants of people full of people, and come to a twentieth-century grid of faxes and emails and overwhelming incompleteness” (Gopnik 158) | “We build a following on Facebook or Myspace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends… But for most people it begins when one creates a profile on social- networking site or builds a persona or avatar for a game or virtual world. (Turkle 273). | Both authors in these quotes talk about how, how technology has begun today to follow you everywhere and becomes more important to you than anything else. And how we create online networks we become encompassed and like our emails they become our lives. We become overwhelmed because we feel like we must respond to them and we must check our twitter followers.

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