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 simple terms, The Flight From Conversation entails the human fight or flight behavior. However, as conversation has begun slipping away from our culture, we’ve failed to fight for it. There is a mentality in society that anything done with a conversation can be done through technology. People have failed to realize the consequences that result from avoiding conversation. We’ve nearly eliminated talking and have replaced it with texting and emailing. We have no realization that texting prevents all feeling that should be involved in that conversation had it been a real conversation. As Turkle states, “ The students had tried to “warm up” their digital messages by using emoticons, typing out the sounds of laughter, and using the forced urgency of TYPING IN ALL CAPS.” (pg. 23). I can personally vouch that this is a very real thing that even I do on a daily basis if not more. People can’t understand that these emotional short cuts and feelings aren’t the same things. On the other hand, they can almost understand the

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.

In this society many people completely immerse themselves in a new life that often times leads to distractions within their real life. Turkle states, “For those who are lonely yet fearful of intimacy, online life provides environments where one can be a loner yet not alone, have the illusion of companionship without the demands of sustained, intimate friendship”. This statement supports her overall claim that the addiction to technology leads to a person alienating themselves. A person could have the greatest life in an online environment and not even leave their house. This continues to lead the reader to the second trouble of her soul by setting them up emotionally. In this instance Turkle is trying to elicit a reaction of feeling sorry for the people reading her essay.

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.

Everyday technology has become a strain on the real world. People would rather have a conversation online than face to face. In today’s society, everything is seemed to be done online, whether it is having a conversation or even trying to make new friends. In The Flight from Conversation, Sherry Turkle asserts that technology has had a negative impact on how we socialize with one another, lessening the conversation. Turkle, who has spent years researching the relationship with technology and humans, uses real world situations where technology has not only changed the way someone socializes but has changed their persona and character making the audience feel pitiful and reflective of their own actions. The author also uses logical reasoning

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

It is widely accepted that technology can be used for people to connect with one another. One primary example that may spring to mind is the smartphone. No matter the distance between two people, the other party is only a text, call, or instant message (IM) away. In consideration of that, certain methods are favored over others. In her work titled “No Need to Call,” Turkle examines why there is a decline of phone calls. She surveys different generational demographics that bring her to the consensus that, regardless of age, texting holds wider appeal because there is less commitment involved. As a result, calls are more significant, only to be used if one is a family member or if the message cannot be properly expressed over text. Cases of the latter may even come with restrictions. One person that Turkle interviewed claims that it was easier to deal with traumatic news without immediately speaking about

In the article, “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.”, Sherry Turkle claims that technology is leaving us vulnerable to the world. Cell phones along with other technology can be detrimental in certain situations. She bases her claim off of several experiments done with all ages of kids and technology. The article, written in 2015 and published in the Sunday Review, targets how the conversations today are becoming shallow because the world attached to their phones. Even though Turkle’s argument that conversations are dying and are shallow, her article shows evidence that conversations are different when phones are in sight. She offers vital information and evidence about scenarios where conversations are changed because of the use technology. She provides statements and facts that are true to our everyday lives especially our lives with technology.

In the articles “Alone in the Crowd” and “As technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?,” Michael Price and Tim Wu, respectively acknowledge the effects of technological advances. While both Price and Wu use effective rhetorical strategies in their articles, one presents their argument in a more persuasive manner. Wu effectively convinces his audience that as a society we continue to advance technologically, but for the wrong reasons. Price references an interview with Sherry Turkle, to convey his opinion that the social media frenzy consumes our society. Price and Wu both present their point of view, but Wu has more factual information to justify his argument. The appeal to emotion is stronger in Price’s article; however, in this situation Wu’s logos appeal is more rhetorically effective. Beyond Ethos, Pathos, and

In her essay “No Need to Call,” Sherry Turkle makes the claim that smart phones, texting in particular, are having a negative effect on the way humans interact and communicate with each other. The issue of how smart phones are changing our social behaviors is important because it can potentially impact the future of the human race. With smart phones, computers and tablets, our society is entering into uncharted territory and we cannot be certain of how the outcome will change our social interactions. Figuring out whether or not these changes are negative or positive is a pertinent topic for all people because everyone is affected by these new technologies in their everyday lives, whether they have them or not. Turkle believes that the way we are communicating through these devices is starting to develop us into humans who are too reliant on impersonal forms of communication to the point that it is changing how we interact with others.

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.