We have seen the computer as a tool, as mirror, and as gateway to a world through the looking glass of the screen. In each of these domains, we are experiencing a complex interweaving of modern and postmodern, calculation and stimulation … As people have become more and more comfortable psychologizing computers and have come to grant them a certain capacity for intelligence, the boundary dispute between people and machines now falls on the question of life.
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: ”We have seen the computer as a tool, as mirror, and as gateway to a world through the looking glass of the screen. In each of these domains, we are experiencing a complex interweaving of modern and postmodern, calculation and stimulation. The tensions are palpable. In the struggle of epistemologies, the computer is caught between its natural pluralism and the fact that certain styles of computing are more culturally resonant than others … In the contest over where the computer fits into categories such as what is or is not intelligent, alive, or person-like, the game is still very much in play. Here, too, we saw tension. In one context, people treat the machine as sentient, an other; in a different context, they insist on its difference from us, its ‘other-ness.’ As people have become more and more comfortable psychologizing computers and have come to grant them a certain capacity for intelligence, the boundary dispute between people and machines now falls on the question of life.”
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 267
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney