Rhetorical Analysis Of The Flight From Conversation By Sherry Turkle

Lyana Beato Professor Deal English 1101 18 November 2016 “The Flight from Conversation” by Sherry Turkle: A Rhetorical Analysis In "The Flight from Conversation," published in The New York Times on April 21, 2012, and written by sociology and personality psychologist, Sherry Turkle, she discusses her concerns on how the world has chosen technological connection over conversation and physical interaction. Turkle informs her readers that “Over the past 15 years, I've studied technologies of mobile connection I've learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are” (Sherry Turkle). Turkle helps develop her argument by building a connection to her audience and using personal experiences such as what she has observed from her students in the classroom and the personal experience of others.

In the article “Growing up Tethered”, by Sherry Turkle, she argues that technology today plays a major role in everyday life. Youths do not have the ability to branch off and have their own independence because of their reliance and attachment to technology. They also use technology to develop who they are as people and create an online personal identity of what they think is a perfect life. In comparison, their own life seems boring, pale and unwanted. Turkle also talks about how teenagers think of their phone as a “friend’s” and cannot live without it. When feeling a strong emotion, teens want to share their feelings with their friends and phone. I agree with Turkle’s opinion that technology is changing and will never be the same, which will be hard to improve this attachment to technology because too many teens are tethered.

Many people are not mindful of how technology is disconnecting us from one another. When people pull out smartphones during a conversation or social gathering they will cause others to feel disconnected. These phones allow people to withdraw from what is happing now and move another situation reducing the quality of the conversation that is within our reach. In the essay "Stop Googling. Let's Talk" by Sherry Turkle; she believes that we are becoming a culture of short chats versus growing our culture of thinkers that are open to sharing in constructive and meaningful conversations with one another.

The author and esteemed Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sherry Turkle, in the essay, “The Flight from Conversation,” published in the New York Times on April 22, 2012 addresses the topic of conversation versus connection. It argues that technology is interfering with the ability to communicate. Turkle supports her claim first by using ethos to establish her credibility, second by using logos to provide her logic, and finally pathos to relate and move the reader. Turkle establishes a sentimental tone in order to appeal to her audience’s emotions on the topic. The author’s overall purpose is to persuade her audience to be together and to interact in person so that they will

“No Need to Call” by Sherry Turkle is an article written about the relationship people have with technology, and specifically with communicating via technology. How it has affected the way we want to interact with people, or how we end up interacting with people. This being due to social norms having changed when it comes to our way of interacting, such as the meaning behind making phone calls rather than texting. The article itself brings up many viewpoints as well as different opinions on the subject, plus a few pros and cons to show that certain things are not always to be seen as black and white. Technology has its advantages, but even the most tech savvy, devoted people have to admit that it has its disadvantages, brought up in this article. Examples are brought up with each point to

In “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” by Sherry Turkle a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five years, she has been focusing on topics: What has happened to face‐ to‐face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk, families, friendships and romance. She has also studied schools, universities and workplaces. Among this topics she has talked and provided studies on how we have become distant from “who we are.” She reports that we as a society have lost a lot of virtues as a society such as a lack of empathy for one another, solitude, and communication with one another. As the “digital world” continues to grow we as a society continue to grow with it and apart from one another. Sherry also emphasizes that we

The relationship between people has been changed because of the widely using of new technology. People can easily communicate with other people by using different kinds of methods. Because of the use of those methods, people have more space with others and frequently hide part of themselves on the Internet in order to show the best of them. In the essay “Small Change: Why he Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Malcolm Gladwell states that the relationship between people can be categorized by strong ties and weak ties. For example, in the past, people communicated by the method of interpersonal hierarchies, which are considered as strong ties. However, with the development of technology, social network, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Skype, which have become very popular in the world, are regarded as weak ties. Moreover, in the essay “Alone Together”, Sherry Turkle claims that people are distant with others and get lost in the virtual world through the new technology. She points out that now people communicate with others through technology instead of directing talking to real people. Furthermore, some people suppose that sociable robots as substitutes for people. Both Gladwell and Turkle agree with the idea that technology plays an important role on people’s connection. Technology only creates inauthentic relationship because it hides identity of many disorganized people.

The use of technology has increased rapidly as time has gone by.  In “Growing Up Tethered”, Turkle proves that the young generation need to be connected at all times by relying on their phones a lot. Reality is now based on technology, which people now live off of. Turkle’s argument in “Growing up Tethered” was used in the form of a book, with a well-organized smoothly transitioned article telling of the disconnection of the world we live in today, due to technologies such as cell phones, and social networks. We are slowly becoming a society of distance amongst each other with face to face conversations being limited to 20minutes phone conversations, and on social network sights we are making a portrayal of a person who we are

To begin, the use of technology has been leaving the people vulnerable. Today conversations are being pushed aside and even in some cases avoided. In the article, Turkle says, “We’ve gotten used to being connected all the time, but we have found ways around conversation — at least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable.” Turkle also implies that by losing this type of conversation, the amount of empathy shared between two people is lost. In one of the studies, “They found a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students, with most of the decline taking place after 2000.” (Turkle, 2015). She shares many stories of how students especially

Being published in a newspaper column, Wortham writes in a less formal language to explain her thoughts on communication through smartphone applications. By including personal stories behind her usage of technology, she is able to reflect on those and validate her opinion of messaging apps. She is able to connect with their reader on a more personal level because the reader can relate to her experiences. Due an excessive amount of technology use from people of all ages, Wortham’s article can reach anyone that uses messaging applications including couples of all ages. She does not single out long distance couples because she also includes the benefits of having these applications with family, friends, and coworkers. In her essay, Wortham straightforwardly states her thoughts on apps such as Facebook messenger, Snapchat, and even Tinder, leaving no room for the reader to become confused. In addition to her own opinions and statistics from Pew Research Center, she uses Sherry Turkle, who disagrees with messaging applications, to acknowledge that both sides understand that there is not an application on our smartphone that can replace a face-to-face

Even though Turkle communicates her claim in a professional and educated manner, the issue at hand is too complex for a single explanation. Throughout the entire argument, there seems to be a lack of response to her audience’s concerns. Speaking in only absolutes, Turkle attributes technology as the main cause for alienating people from one another, yet, we must look at all the available evidence that could cause our society to become alienated from one another. For instance, Turkle chooses not to address the fact that there may be other ways a person can create a “new state of self,” (507) which is what Turkle refers to as a virtual second life, thus creating an unbalance within Turkle’s claim leading her audience to question her ethos. In

In a world where the functions of cellphones, robotics, and such technology are rising, humans are becoming more and more dependent on them on a day to day basis. People are seen using a cell phone all the time and pretty much all jobs use some sort of technology in order to aid the workers. Essay authors published in the book “They Say/I Say” all have different opinions on whether or not all this rise of technology is a beneficial thing for humans or not. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr believes that the internet is altering the way that his mind works when he is reading and Sherry Turkle’s article “No Need to Call” depicts several instances of people’s lives and how they are affected by their phones and computers.

For example Turkle observes that Audrey’s avatar online has a much more mature body with a different hair style and more makeup than the real life Audrey. In one of their conversations they are talking about ending a conversation over the phone verses online, and Audrey says it is harder to end a conversation over the telephone. Audrey says “I don’t want to learn.” When she says this she means she does not want to learn how to end a phone conversation because it is so much easier to end a conversation on the internet. This is a barrier between Audrey and communicating with others in person and it all started because of the ability to hide behind a screen. One of Turkle’s main ideas in the article is to show how technology is preventing people from having more real conversations because it is easier to do it online, over a text message or even an email. Sherry Turkle has a successful argument about how technology can be used for hiding from real life confrontation and she uses Audrey’s personal experiences to back up her claim.

The use of communication technology allows humans to get used to doing less. Sherry Turkle, a TED Talk speaker, informs people of how technology causes people to be connected, but alone. Her analysis of solitude shows the audience that humanity is unable to reach out to other people and form real attachments. Turkle states “People can’t get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts that they can control. I call it The Goldilocks Effect.” The Goldilocks Effect refers to the habits of humans wanting each other not too close, not too far, but just right. This effect, and other consequences from communication technology, proves that humans expect more from technology than from each other. Humans find it easier to keep to themselves rather than to participate in social interaction. The continued use of technological devices encourages distance between humans. Communication technology may never be used the intended way as a helping aid, rather, it is used as a replacement to human interaction and

Sherry Turkle was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948. She is a professor of Social Studies and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has written many works, such as Alone Together, and this article, The Flight from Conversation, was published in the New York Times in April of 2012. The claim she makes in the article is that communication technology is causing society to lose its ability to have a meaningful conversation. She presents several strong rhetorical strategies, and some weak ones, through logos, ethos, and pathos.