Sherry Turkle Analysis

1340 Words6 Pages
If you look around, it is difficult to find a group in which not a single person is using their phone at that moment nor has it on their person. Technology consumes our everyday lives and we feel lost without it. Sherry Turkle, a professor of sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees these as symptoms of a technological addiction that our society is slowly succumbing to, causing us to retreat into the technological abyss of isolation. In her TED Talk, she presents her view with the intent of convincing her audience that this problem needs to be solved immediately. Turkle uses personal anecdotes, inclusive language, and confusion through paradox to create a relationship with the audience that induces emotions of fear and longing for connection. From the start, Turkle uses personal anecdotes to help connect with her audience and align their feelings with her own. Utilizing common experiences shared by many technologically connected people, Turkle describes her regular interactions with technology, ranging from her daughter texting her “good luck” before she presents her TED Talk, to Turkle’s own need to sleep with her cellphone each night (0:17). Her honesty in admitting that she feels the need to be constantly “plugged in” and her worries about desiring control allow her audience to look inward and recognize the same problems within themselves. By including her own personal stories and accompanied fears about the future of technological connectedness, Turkle forges a mutual understanding with her audience that allows them to see her perspective as a human being concerned about the state of her world, rather than an intellectual merely reporting this technological phenomenon. By putting herself in a relatable position and establishing an emotional connection with her audience, Turkle more easily makes the audience feel what she wants them
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