1. Turkle writes about how we develop an online self that is independent of our real life
self. What do you think of that?
a. Pete spends significant about of time on Second Life talking Jade, a sort of
second wife. He notes that it’s easier to talk to Jade about some issues than
his real wife because he doesn’t have to be concerned with Jade worrying
about him like his wife would. Thoughts? What is it about the medium that
makes this work?
b. Adolescents seem worry a lot about their Facebook profiles and the sort of
person that it portrays. This includes the obvious things such as profile
pictures, but also minor things such as the order of artists in “favorite music”.
Have you cared so much about your online presentation?
2. Turkle suggests that the digital world can’t offer the same opportunities for
relationships that real life can.
a. Is this a problem? Is there a place for this type of relationship?
b. How does this work for adolescents or others who aren’t fully capable of
developing relationships?
3. We love multitasking because it makes us feel productive. We love technology
because it allows us to be on-call at all times to respond to things. Neither of these,
however, are working well for us. Multitasking makes us less efficient at all of the
things we’re working on, and being more able to quickly deal with problems leads to
more stress
a. Are you okay with this change?
b. What is it about this method of working that appeals so strongly to us?
c. If you think it’s bad, how do we reverse this trend?
4. Time is a big theme. Technology leads us to expect faster responses to each other.
Technology also makes us expect things to develop quickly, whereas many things in
real life (relationships in particular) happen incrementally over a long time.
a. Adolescents today are growing up like this. How do you see this affecting us
in the future?
b. How have you expectations changed about response times with technology?
5. Being disrupted sounds bad, but really, we love it. We check our email and
Facebook obsessively for updates. We love the ping of push notifications like texts
and emails, and it’s all instant gratification
a. It may seem intrinsic to the technology, but products are designed to get us
addicted to using it. Do you think this is good?
b. How does this change our reward system?
6. The phone call is dying. These days, we don’t use the phone as much because
we’re often not up to the demands of it. Many adolescents love the fact that texts can
be carefully constructed, whereas phone calls because we can’t meet the demands
of it. There’s a lot of talk about being able to control things better when it’s done via
text, where you can edit your message exactly as you like.
a. How important is it to you to be able to control the message you present when
talking to others?
b. Do you see phone calls as a lot of pressure?
c. Is texting more or less efficient than talking?
7. Another benefit to texting is that it’s asynchronous. Suddenly, we see phone calls as
a possible inconvenience to others as we demand their attention immediately, and
maybe they’re busy
a. Before, we mentioned that we like being disrupted, though. How do we
resolve this?
b. Since when did we get so sensitive about bothering others?
“How has digital technology changed the kind of communications you have with
your friends, family and coworkers?”
. How has our relationship to technology changed over the years?