No Need To Call By Sherry Turrkle Analysis

There are many different views on whether technology is beneficial or not. In No Need to Call, by Sherry Turkle, Turkle argues that technology is not beneficial because it affects social interaction in a negative way. In Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, Carr claims that the internet is non beneficial because it has become a distraction and is making humans avoid the traditional sense of reading and writing. In Better than Human: Why Robots Will-and Must-Take Our Jobs by Kevin Kelly, Kelly believes that technology is beneficial thing because by allowing robots to take our jobs, it allows humans to be more creative. Clive Thompson’s essay Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better states that technology

Her main focus is comparing text messages and social media versus phone calls. Text messages and social media create an illusion of privacy and make users feel free to write themselves into the person they want to be (374). People are not being themselves on social media and, therefore, fail to be able to respond immediately during a phone call conversation. People tend to avoid phone calls because it promises more than a person is willing to deliver (374). It is more convenient for a person to send a written form of communication, but it is not the same as verbal communication. Turkle shares a story of someone named Tara who had a friend who felt that telling her about their sister’s death through and email was not convenient (384). Through a phone call Tara could have detected the emotion in her friend’s voice and found out that her sister had passed away. Voices are crucial to connect with others because without them a person can not fully connect with another. Written forms of communication limit connections between people because it does not equate to connecting with an individual face to face. Hence, Turkle’s argument that technology is not beneficial. Similarly, Nicholas Carr, does not think the internet is a good

Media theorist Marshall McLuhan believes that “the more we use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (315). The Web has caused people to loose their patience for reading long pieces of writing and only partially read it. Bruce Friedman, a blogger, admits that he has lost his ability to read long articles. Three to four paragraphs have become too much for him to read, so he just skims it (316). Maryanne Wolf, a phycologist, worries that the internet’s reading style is weakening our capacity for deep reading because it puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else (317). Google says that its main objective is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (324). It was designed to be useful, but as Google founder Larry page states Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.” Artificial intelligence is the hardest problem to solve out there (325). It is only in companies’ economic interest to create things that put a strain on our reading and concentration levels (326). Stanley Kubrick’s dark prophecy is that if people continue to rely on computers to give them the answers to the world, their intelligence flattens into artificial intelligence (328). This is why Carr, believes that technology is not