Our new media are well suited for accomplishing the rudimentary. And because this is what technology serves up, we reduce our expectations of each other.
What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.
Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.
People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.
Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed – and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.
We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.
The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.
We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.
Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.
If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely. And if we don’t teach our children to be alone, they’re only going to know how to be lonely.
Loneliness is failed solitude.
We expect more from technology and less from each other.
Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.
Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.
I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I’m a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.
People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of Wired magazine. Then things began to change. In the early 80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.
We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy.