The author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other will discuss the psychology of people’s relationship with technology at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 8 in the Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel on Middle Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public. Turkle will be signing her new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, after the lecture. Tickets will be required. Register online here.

Referred to by many as the “Margaret Mead of digital culture,” Turkle is a professor, author, consultant, researcher and licensed clinical psychologist who has spent the last 30 years researching the effect of technology on human behavior. She offers a unique perspective on technology and social interaction and on the psychological dimensions of technological change. Her work investigates the intersection of digital technology and human relationships, from the early days of personal computers to our current world of robotics, artificial intelligence, social networking, and mobile connectivity.

Turkle currently is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.

She is the author of many books in this field, most notably, a critically acclaimed trilogy on computers and people: The Second Self: Computers and The Human Spirit; Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, and her most recent, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. Her latest book will be released in October 2015, dealing with reclaiming conversation in the face of digital isolation, at work, home, and school.

Turkle has been profiled in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American and Wired, and was named “Woman of the Year” by Ms. magazine and among the “Forty Under Forty” who are changing the nation by Esquire. She is a featured media commentator on the social and psychological effects of technology for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, the BBC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline, Frontline, The Colbert Report and 20/20.

The annual talk is sponsored by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation lecture series. Turkle joins a long list of Oppenheimer lecturers who have given talks on campus over the last several years, including theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist Thomas Friedman, economist and presidential advisor John Kenneth Galbraith, Lincoln historian Eric Foner, and many others.

News Contact

Linda Blaser
Manager, News and Media Relations
847-735-6177
blaser@lakeforest.edu

Register online for this event.

Related Links:

• Sherry Turkle's TED talk "Connected, but alone?" has more than 2.7M views. Click here to view.