The prediction, in brief:

The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. In its virtual reality, we self-fashion and self-create … Is this a shallow game, a giant waste of time? Is it an expression of an identity crisis of the sort we traditionally associate with adolescence? Or are we watching the slow emergence of a new, more multiple style of thinking about the mind?

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:”The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life. In its virtual reality, we self-fashion and self-create. What kinds of personae do we make? What relation do these have to what we have traditionally thought of as the ‘whole’ person? Are they exerienced as an expanded self or as separate from the self? Do our real-life selves learn lessons from our virtual personae? Are these virtual personae fragments of a coherent real-life personality? How do they communicate with one another? Why are we doing this? Is this a shallow game, a giant waste of time? Is it an expression of an identity crisis of the sort we traditionally associate with adolescence? Or are we watching the slow emergence of a new, more multiple style of thinking about the mind? These questions can be addressed by looking at many different locations on the Internet.”

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: Relationships

Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)

Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 7: Aspects of the Self

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 180

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney