Virtual spaces may provide the safety for us to expose what we are missing so that we can begin to accept ourselves as we are. Virtuality need not be a prison. It can be the raft, the ladder, the transitional space, the moratorium, that is discarded after reaching greater freedom. We don’t have to reject life on the screen, but we don’t have to treat it as an alternative life either. We can use it as a space for growth … Like the anthropologist returning home from a foreign culture, the voyager in virtuality can return to a real world better equipped to understand its artifices.
Predictor: Turkle, Sherry
Prediction, in context:In her 1995 book “Life on the Screen,” Sherry Turkle – an accomplished social psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from MIT whose studies centered around people and computers for decades – writes: ”Each of us in our own way is incomplete. Virtual spaces may provide the safety for us to expose what we are missing so that we can begin to accept ourselves as we are. Virtuality need not be a prison. It can be the raft, the ladder, the transitional space, the moratorium, that is discarded after reaching greater freedom. We don’t have to reject life on the screen, but we don’t have to treat it as an alternative life either. We can use it as a space for growth. Having literally written our online personae into existence, we are in a position to be more aware of what we project into everyday life. Like the anthropologist returning home from a foreign culture, the voyager in virtuality can return to a real world better equipped to understand its artifices.”
Biography:Sherry Turkle was the author of “Life on the Screen: Computers and the Human Spirit.” and a professor of the psychology of science at MIT. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 10: Identity Crisis
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 263
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney