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

“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.”

“Texting offers just the right amount of access, just the right amount of control. She is a modern Goldilocks: for her, texting puts people not too close, not too far, but at just the right distance. The world is now full of modern Goldilockses, people who take comfort in being in touch with a lot of people whom they also keep at bay.”

“People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.”

“We... heal ourselves by giving others what we most need.”

“When Thoreau considered "where I live and what I live for," he tied together location and values. Where we live doesn't just change how we live; it informs who we become. Most recently, technology promises us lives on the screen. What values, Thoreau would ask, follow from this new location? Immersed in simulation, where do we live, and what do we live for?”

“we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.”

“We fill our days with ongoing connection, denying ourselves time to think and dream.”

“In solitude we don't reject the world but have the space to think our thoughts.”

“The technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of them. These young people are among the first to grow up with an expectation of continuous connection: always on, and always on them. And they are among the first to grow up not necessarily thinking of simulation as second best. All of this makes them fluent with technology but brings a set of new insecurities.”

“The idea that we can be exactly what the other desires is a powerful fantasy.”

“These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.”

“Because you can text while doing something else, texting does not seem to take time but to give you time. This is more than welcome; it is magical.”

“This is a new nonnegotiable: to feel safe, you have to be connected.”

“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. And with constant connection comes new anxieties of disconnection,”

“this distinctive confusion: these days, whether you are online or not, it is easy for people to end up unsure if they are closer together or further apart.”

“Relationships we complain about nevertheless keep us connected to life.”

“A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.”

“If you're having a conversation with someone in speech, and it's not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it's not like that. On the Internet it's almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can't say, "I changed my mind.”

“As infants, we see the world in parts. There is the good—the things that feed and nourish us. There is the bad—the things that frustrate or deny us. As children mature, they come to see the world in more complex ways, realizing, for example, that beyond black and white, there are shades of gray. The same mother who feeds us may sometimes have no milk. Over time, we transform a collection of parts into a comprehension of wholes.4 With this integration, we learn to tolerate disappointment and ambiguity. And we learn that to sustain realistic relationships, one must accept others in their complexity. When we imagine a robot as a true companion, there is no need to do any of this work.”

“This is the experience of living full time on the Net, newly free in some ways, newly yoked in others. We are all cyborgs now.”

“As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.”

“Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.”

“When you depend on the computer to remember your past, you focused on whatever past is kept on the computer.”

“Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?”

“To understand desire, one needs language and flesh.”

“Sometimes a citizenry should not simply "be good". You have to leave space for dissent, real dissent.”

“One of the emotional affordances of digital communication is that one can always hide behind deliberated nonchalance.”

“Texting is more direct. You don't have to use conversation filler.”

“But this is not a book about robots. Rather, it is about how we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face.”