Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities.” 

Turkle introduces the idea of technology preying on our vulnerabilities, which she will later expand upon by contrasting it with things that prey upon on needs. Our biggest vulnerability has to do with a fear of intimacy and a need for social connection.

“Sociable robots serve as both symptom and dream: as a symptom, they promise a way to sidestep conflicts about intimacy; as a dream, they express a wish for relationships with limits, a way to be both together and alone.” 

Turkle believes our fascination with sociable robots is a symptom of our fear of intimacy. We are so eager to seek intimacy out in a safe, unthreatening form. Social robots demand a reaction from the user and thus offer something that looks like a relationship, but Turkle argues that these interactions may hamper humans’ abilities to create real connections with other humans.

“But when technology engineers intimacy, relationships can be reduced to mere connections. And then, easy connection becomes redefined as intimacy. Put otherwise, cyberintimacies slide into cybersolitudes.” 

Turkle sees this kind of “downgrading” in how we define our social connections as a danger of technology. In this case the supposed solution to the problem (a desire for intimacy) only makes the problem worse by further isolating humans and potentially cheapening their real-life interactions.

“They promise reciprocity because, unlike traditional dolls, they are not passive. They make demands. They present as having their own needs and inner lives.” 

Turkle draws a distinction here between dolls (which children might project needs onto) and interactive robots. The difference is in how active they are. The robots make users complicit in their “aliveness” by forcing users to interact with them. 

“From Bruce to Howard, human fallibility has gone from being an endearment to a liability.” 

Turkle talks to Bruce in 1983 and Howard in 2008 and notes the change in young people’s thinking in those twenty-five years. Bruce feels that the knowledge and abilities of robots cannot replace the humanity of humans. Twenty-five years later, Howard represents a shift in attitudes about what robots can provide and prefers their infallibility to human imperfection.

“It will begin with our seeing the new life as ‘as if ’ life and then deciding that ‘as if’ may be life enough.” 

Again, Turkle is worried that, because of interactions with sociable robots, there will be a reduction in what we see as life, a social connection, intimacy, and that this will become the new norm. She presents this concern in the context of the robot dog AIBO, who behaves similarly to a real dog and who some users treat as a real pet. Because users could potentially decide that something that acts like a real dog is enough for them, this feeling could carry over into other areas of life, and they could fail to develop real-life intimacies in other areas. 

“The first thing missing if you take a robot as a companion is alterity, the ability to see the world through the eyes of another.” 

This is a consequence of a simplified, one-sided relationship with a robot: a reduction in empathy. A robot cannot fully understand the human experience because it is not human. Those who connect with robots over other humans miss out on this perspective and the understanding that comes from a companion that also has had true human experiences.

“Henry demotes AIBO to ‘just pretend.’ But then he is unhappy because his belief in AIBO’s affection increases his self-esteem. Henry is caught in a complicated, circular love test. In our passage to postbiological relationships, we give ourselves new troubles.”

This is an example of how a proposed solution to a problem can unintentionally deepen the problem. Sociable robots are intended to provide companionship and ease loneliness, but if they fall short of what a live companion can provide, a user risks new emotional troubles.

“The strong feelings that robots elicit may help children to a better understanding of what is on their minds, but a robot cannot help children find the meaning behind the anger it provokes.” 

Here Turkle points out that a robot’s use as a tool for understanding yourself better only goes so far. Again, she shows that robots do not have the benefit of the full range of human experiences to draw from, so they are unable to truly empathize the way a human could. Because of this, robots will not be able to help users fully work through emotions the way a human companion might.

“‘If robots don’t feel pain, how could they comfort you?’”

A 12-year-old says this during a discussion about a robot babysitter. It reflects one of Turkle’s central themes: the behaviorist view of robots versus the Romantic view. Turkle finds that children are largely behaviorist when it comes to their thinking about robots. They want robots to act as though they feel empathy and concern, and do not worry if the robot has emotions behind these behaviors. This question shows the Romantic view, which wants an action to be prompted by a feeling.

“The fifth graders think that a robot could be a babysitter if it could manage babysitter behavior.” 

This gets to the heart of whether behavior is the only important thing or if the internal states of robots are relevant in determining how we should interact with them. To the children Turkle talks to about this issue, it is not important that a robot truly be able to empathize with them—only that the robot can act like it does. They feel the behavior itself is more important than the feeling behind it.

“From my perspective, the lack of robotic ‘empathy’ depends on their not being part of the human life cycle, of not experiencing what humans experience. But these are not Bridget’s concerns. She imagines a robot that could be comforting if it performed pain. This is the behaviorism of the robotic moment.” 

Here, Turkle lays out her reasoning for not subscribing to a behaviorist model for robotics. To her, the feeling behind the behavior is essential. A robot will never be able to truly empathize with a human because a robot is not human and does not experience what humans do. The lack of feeling behind robots’ behavior creates an essential difference for Turkle; she does not want just the performance of an action.

“Loving the robot makes her feel more loved.” 

Turkle refers here to 10-year-old Callie’s relationship with her My Real Baby. Her parents are not her primary caregivers, and she finds fulfillment in caring for the baby, despite the fact that she knows it’s not real.

“More than harmless amusements, they are powerful because they invite our attachment. And such attachments change our way of being in the world.” 

Callie, at the end of the study, finds herself fearful that My Real Baby will forget her the same way her parents do when they’re away. Turkle extrapolates this to the culture at large dealing with sociable robots. Humans form real attachments to these robots that can affect their ability to form attachments to other humans.

“My response was involuntary, I am tempted to say visceral. Cog had a face, it made eye contact, and it followed my movements. With these three simple elements in play, although I knew Cog to be a machine, I had to fight my instinct to react to ‘him’ as a person.” 

Even with her skepticism, Turkle catches herself attributing human qualities to machines, too, proving just how effective the illusion of aliveness can be. When she interacts with the social robot Cog, she wants its attention, as she might another human’s, because the way the robot behaves mimics human behavior so well.

“We are drawn into necessary complicities.” 

This refers to the idea that to get something out of sociable robots, we are required to help them, fill in the blanks in their programming, thus making us complicit in the illusion. We find reasons for glitches in robot behavior, and as we get to know how they operate, we tailor our behavior to get the responses we want.

“Again, projection onto an object becomes engagement with a subject; Rorschach gives way to relationship.” 

This is about the sociable robot Kismet and references what Turkle calls the robot’s ability to “push back”—while dolls might allow one to work through problems in one’s own real-life relationships, the robot promises a new relationship and the end to worries about other problematic ones.

“Do we really want to be in the business of manufacturing friends that will never be friends?” 

Turkle is taking for granted that we can never have a coequal relationship with a robot and is questioning a desire (for an uncomplicated, one-sided friendship) that cannot, by definition, be fulfilled.

“Are we ready to see ourselves in the mirror of the machine and to see love as our performances of love?” 

This is the opposite of what Turkle has been arguing for, the only way of getting us on equal emotional footing with robots, if we believe that they can never experience emotions like us.

“Nurturance was the killer app for robotics. Tending the robots incited our engagement. There is a parallel for the networked life. Always on and (now) always with us, we tend the Net, and the Net teaches us to need it.” 

Here Turkle finds a link between robotics and social networks, how we are seduced by both in a similar way. Sociable robots draw users in with their apparent needs and create a reaction in the users; this creates a bond. The “always-on” quality of the internet means that users can feel compelled to constantly update social media profiles and respond to messages.

“What is not being cultivated here is the ability to be alone and reflect on one’s emotions in private. On the contrary, teenagers report discomfort when they are without their cell phones. They need to be connected in order to feel like themselves. Put in a more positive way, both Claudia and Julia share feelings as part of discovering them. They cultivate a collaborative self.”

This pinpoints one thing that Turkle sees as something genuinely lost when we immerse ourselves in the always-on instant feedback loop of texting and social networks: the ability to reflect and grow. It can make one emotionally static, busy but unable to mature.

“He prefers a deliberate performance that can be made to seem spontaneous. This offhand, seeming-not-to-care style has always been an emotional staple of adolescence, but now it is facilitated by digital communication: you send out a feeler; you look like you don’t much care; things happen.” 

Turkle acknowledges that this performative aspect of adolescence is nothing new, but it has only gotten more pervasive with our new digital culture. Now teenagers have the ability to try on many personalities online through social media profiles and online games. This can lead to much time spent in making ones profile look a certain way for the benefit of a perceived audience. 

“This is the sweet spot of simulation: the exhilaration of creativity without its pressures, the excitement of exploration without its risks.” 

This quote is about the game Civilization, and Turkle makes a similar point as she does with robotics and love, only with games and creativity. Just as relationships with robots present the opportunity for intimacy without the pressure of commitment (because users can simply turn a robot off if they do not feel like giving it attention), online games allow players to express creativity without real-life risks like failure and rejection.