Connected But Alone on Spaceship Earth

Shelley Turkle and Mike Wesch, I think, may be unlikely allies in the discussion of new media and technology. In her "Connected But Alone" Ted Talk (2012), Turkle argues that we need "sacred spaces" in which we put away our devices and simply talk to one another. Wesch asserts a similar sentiment in his Ted Talk, "What Baby George Taught Me About Learning" (2016) when he advocates for having one on one lunchtime conversations with students to get to know the whole person. 

In his essay, "Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance" (2008) Wesch asserts that that learning happens best when "learners are free to pursue with great passion the questions that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives,” though he does not specifically note where and how this pursuit should take place. Turkle is more specific; she argues that people need time and autonomy to think, free from distraction, when she says that  "solitude is where you find yourself so you can reach out to other people and form attachments."

Both Turkle and Wesch describe the great importance of understanding our interconnectedness on what Buckminster Fuller (as Wesch notes) referred to as "Spaceship Earth" -and I couldn't resist posting a photo of the popular attraction from EPCOT above. Turkle says that we need to spend time alone, in solitude, with experiences outside of our interactions with machines to wrap our minds around and truly experience our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own families, and own planet. But, she notes, technology doesn't need to be absent from this "real life." Rather, it can be a tool to make this life the life we can love." I think Wesch would agree here when he writes about how he makes his own very large lecture classes seem much smaller through various technology, such as texting and social media, that allows students to form smaller groups that can go deeper into getting to know one another. He writes extensively about how the "grand narratives" of the past, like religion and nationalism, no longer hold as much relevance in peoples' lives, and that our big "why" is much more about the urgency we have to save humanity from destroying itself and the planet.

I thought often about the movie "Her" (2013) as I listened to Turkle. "Her" is about a man, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who falls in love with an AI, or artificial intelligence voice (played by Scarlett Johanssen). In the film, the AI is a futuristic version of Siri or Alexa or the Google Assistant, who has the ability to interact, have an emotional cadence to her voice, and even love. She is like Turkle's baby seal - trained to empathize and respond. And because I think everyone should see this film, I won't give it all away, but it does bring up important questions about why we would turn to devices for love and validation, when we have an entire world to save right outside our doorsteps?

I wonder if some of our inward turning, and our disconnection with each other, is a result of the intense vulnerability we are all feeling in this era of great disparity, environmental precariousness, and and overall sense of despair...

On a more positive note, both authors reinforce my feeling that as a teacher and parent and even just as a person on Earth in 2021, it's my job to help everyone around me use technology to "make this a life we can love" - to show this love to others and to the world. But I have questions. How much "sacred space" do we need to do this? How much technology is too much, and how much is too little? How do we work with our current situation to make things better?