The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
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M820046FRONT.qxd 11/1/05 8:06 AM Page 1 computers/psychology/human development ,!7IA2G2-habbbc!:t;K;k;K;k T he Second Self The Second Self The Second Self Computers and the Human Spirit Twentieth Anniversary Edition Computers and the Human Spirit Sherry Turkle In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a “tool,” but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship 0-262-70111-1 with the world. “Technology,” she writes, “catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think.” First published in 1984, The Second Self is still essential reading as a primer in the psychology of computation. This twentieth anniversary edition allows us to reconsider two decades of computer culture—to (re)experience what was and is most novel in our new media culture and to view our own contemporary relationship with technology with fresh eyes. Turkle frames this classic work with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and extensive notes added to the original text. Sherry Turkle Turkle talks to children, college students, engineers, AI scientists, hackers, and personal com- puter owners—people confronting machines that seem to think and at the same time suggest a new way for us to think—about human thought, emotion, memory, and understanding. Her inter- “A brilliant and challenging views reveal that we experience computers as being on the border between inanimate and animate, Turkle as both an extension of the self and part of the external world. Their special place betwixt and discussion presented with between traditional categories is part of what makes them compelling and evocative. In the intro- extraordinary clarity.” 820046 08/31/05 duction to this edition, Turkle quotes a PDA user as saying, “When my Palm crashed, it was like a death. I thought I had lost my mind.” Why we think of the workings of a machine in psychological —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, terms—how this happens, and what it means for all of us—is the ever more timely subject of The New York Times Second Self. Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and Founder and Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Twentieth Anniversary Edition “Anyone who wishes to know about the effects of computers on American society today would do well to read The Second Self.”—Howard Gardner, New York Times Book Review “Turkle has created an excursion into thought. Sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers can benefit from examination of the principles put forth by Turkle.”—Byte “A remarkably readable book that should appeal to anyone with the faintest interest in contemporary society and where it’s headed.”—Newsday The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit Twentieth Anniversary Edition Sherry Turkle The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England First edition published by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1984, © 1984 Sherry Turkle First MIT Press edition © 2005 Sherry Turkle All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail <[email protected]> or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Turkle, Sherry. The second self : computers and the human spirit / Sherry Turkle.—20th anniversary ed. p. c.m Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-70111-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Computers. 2. Electronic data processing—Psychological aspects. I. Title. QA76.T85 2005 004—dc22 2004064980 10987654321 To Robert Bonowitz and Mildred Bonowitz Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction to the MIT Press Edition (2004) 1 Introduction (1984): The Evocative Object 17 Part I Growing Up with Computers: The Animation of the Machine 1 Child Philosophers: Are Smart Machines Alive? 33 2 Video Games and Computer Holding Power 65 3 Child Programmers: The First Generation 91 4 Adolescence and Identity: Finding Yourself in the Machine 131 Part II The New Computer Cultures: The Mechanization of the Mind 5 Personal Computers with Personal Meanings 155 6 Hackers: Loving the Machine for Itself 183 7 The New Philosophers of Artificial Intelligence: A Culture with Global Aspirations 219 Part III Into a New Age 8 Thinking of Yourself as a Machine 247 9 The Human Spirit in a Computer Culture 279 Epilogue (2004): Changing the Subject and Finding the Object 287 Appendixes A On Method: A Sociology of Sciences of Mind 303 B Children’s Psychological Discourse: Methods and Data Summary 313 Notes 323 Index 359 Acknowledgments 2004 I thank Kelly Gray for being a close and dedicated reader, who along with Jen Audley, Robert Briscoe, Deborah Cantor-Adams, Anita Chan, Michele Crews, Olivia Dasté, and Rachel Prentice, offered helpful opinions about the direction to take in preparing this new edition. And I am grateful to my daughter, Rebecca Ellen Turkle Willard, who has inspired, delighted, and given me permission to quote her. 1984 I have worked on this book for six years and I have accumulated many debts. My first, of course, is to my informants who generously allowed me to share in their lives. My second debt is not to individuals but to an insti- tution. This is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was at MIT that I first met up with the computer culture and it was at MIT that I found help and support to pursue my understanding of it. Two people gave me early encouragement that helped to get my project underway: Harold J. Hanham, the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Michael Dertouzos, Director of the Laboratory for Computer Science. In the Laboratory for Computer Science, Hal Abelson, J. C. R. Licklider, Robert Fano, Warren J. Seering, and Joseph Weizenbaum were early guides to important issues, as were Patrick Winston, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, and Gerald Sussman in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Benson Snyder in the Division for Study and Research in Education. I owe a special debt to Professors Abelson, Fano, Seering, and Sussman of MIT as well as to Professor William H. Bossert of Harvard for x Acknowledgments making it possible for me to study the progress of students in their introductory programming courses. At MIT my academic home is in the Program for Science, Technology, and Society. My colleagues there read the earliest drafts of the research proposals and reports that grew into this book; they helped me formulate my ideas. I thank all of them, with par- ticular thanks to Carl Kaysen, Kenneth Keniston, Leo Marx, and Michael Piore. I have a special debt to Professor Keniston. For several years he and I have taught the course “Technology and the Individual.” Some of the material in this book was first presented there and gained enormously from his reflections, as it did from the reactions of our students. My students have played a very special role in this project, particularly the students who have taken my “Computers and People” seminar through the years. My work required me to learn many things about electronics, computers, and programming languages, all of which were new to me. In my students I found tireless teachers. Beyond helping me to learn what I needed to know technically, they helped me to see the depth of feeling and involvement that people develop when they interact with technical objects: bicycles, radios, and model trains as well as computers. Without this understanding I would not have been able to write this book. My intellectual debts extend beyond MIT. This book is an outgrowth of a previous project—a sociological study of psychoanalysis. What seemed like a shift of interest to many of my friends and colleagues felt to me like the pursuit of the same goal: to understand how ideas move out from a sophisticated technical world into the culture as a whole and, once there, how they shape the way people think about themselves. And so I owe a debt to several sociologists who had a formative influence on my earlier work—Daniel Bell, George Homans, and David Riesman, all of whom encouraged me in this new project and supported my sense of its intel- lectual continuity with what I had done before. Listening was at the heart of this research, and I must thank my col- leagues in the Mental Health Service of the Harvard University Health Service who helped me to become a better clinician, that is to say a better listener. The many readers of my manuscript made important contributions. Alice Mayhew offered a unique and disciplined perspective. At a crucial point in the process of rewriting, Janet Sand encouraged me to go beyond what I then thought were my best efforts. Cynthia Merman offered that mix of moral support and practical suggestion that marks a fine editor. Jaffray Cuyler, Craig Decker, Elaine Douglass, Erwin Glikes, Ann Godoff, Sani Kirmani, Rob Kling, Michael Korda, Martin Krieger, Pearl Levy, Justin Acknowledgments xi Marble, Artemis Papert, Christopher Stacy, Lloyd Tennenbaum, and Deborah Wilkes all made suggestions that found their way into the finished product.