One of my new resolutions is to buy The New York Times Sunday paper. I now spend the 5 bucks and allow my hands to get marked up with ink and sort through the countless sections even if it takes me a week. I love it. It gives me the time to take a moment and pause, set my own pace, things that I would otherwise not do if I was reading the news online. I’m most certainly less distracted. It also offers me the time I need to be alone to relax, and find the thoughts and questions I want to share and think about who I want to share them with. Yes, we all know reading is fundamental but it offers me a bit of solitude too. So it’s a bit ironic about how I found a related article about this topic: the importance of solitude in the digital age.
Recently, I came across an article about Sherry Turkle‘s recent TED talk called The Flight from Conversation that was in the Sunday Review (one of my favorite sections) which led me to watch her TED talk. Turkle made a lot of interesting points and discussed the importance of finding solitude and the difference between connecting online and true conversation which is HUGE. She reiterates at the end that she doesn’t want us to abandon technology but allow it to enhance our lives rather than take over. We’ve heard this before but she offers some new insight about how technology is changing who we are.
With new technology and social media sites, Turkle talks about how this offers us three fantasies:
1) We’ll have attention everywhere.
2) We’ll always be heard.
3) We’ll never have to be alone.
Turkle believes we need to cultivate a capacity for solitude. ”If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely.” She also mentions: “We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”
She talks about how in-person conversations are messy and this is a good and important thing. It gives us the opportunity to learn about ourselves and how to connect. This is something that youth may have a harder time figuring out since they do not understand how things were before the internet. I’m so glad I was born early enough to remember those days.
Turkle does offer some simple remedies but I’ll let you watch and discover what they are. Turkle’s TED talk was a great reminder about the importance of solitude and the power of true conversation and how this impacts society. Bravo.
Has technology and social networking changed who you are? How do you find solitude?
{ 0 comments }
