How Computers Change the Way We Thin

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English 1301 27 January 2013 How Computers Change the Way We Think Sherry Turkle is a sociologist, clinical psychologist, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “How Computers Change the Way We Think” first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2004). Turkle begins her article by describing her first encounters with technology changes in the 1970s, which she refers to as “ the end of the era of the slide rule and the beginning of the era of the personal computer”(Turkle 348). The first evidence Turkle found was when some professors at the MIT interacted about the change from slide rules to calculators. Students who depended on calculators had problems with decimals and other mathematical operations (348). Turkle indicates that elementary school students’ use of computers and Internet change their way of thinking. At that point she began to study not only what computers do for us, but also what they do to us (348). Furthermore, Turkle affirms that machines are now being designed to serve as a companion and that technology does not determine changes, but it encourages us to take certain directions. Based on her experience, Turkle explains the relationship between privacy and technology. The use of technology is affecting students especially in high school and college. According to Turkle, today’s college students have little experience with the right to privacy as they leave trails of everything they have done online, unlike previous generations who have worked hard to protect their privacy. In her article, Turkle also describes the use of online avatars as both a positive and negative image in children’s lives. Some children invest far too much time developing their online personality while role-playing offers a safe place in a world full of crime, terrorism, and drugs. As a consequence this retards their social growth

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