Some notes from two of Sherry Turkle's works: Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS. Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer. and Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press These works are well worth reading in full. This is just some points taken from those readings to be used in my class

1. Some Discussions on
Sherry Turkle
Nick Reynolds
ICT and C21 Learning Communities
The University of Melbourne

2. Constructions and Reconstructions of
Self in Virtual Reality
 What individuals alone can achieve is ‘raised to a higher power’ when
communicating with computers (in this case through MUDs)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.

3. Online Self
 Julee – role plays her own relationship with her mother with positive
consequences. Turkle sees this as the opposite of how online games are
portrayed
 “You are the character and you are not the character both at the same time,” “you
are who you pretend to be”
 Peter’s learning of world politics, culture and economics developed through
MUDs
 Anonymity, invisibility, multiplicity

4. Positive Outcomes
 The computer as an ‘evocative object’ – promotes self
reflection and stimulates thought
 Gender swapping and development of understanding and
empathy of the social construction of gender
 Habitat as a representation of ‘real’ life
 ‘Virtual reality is not “real”, but it has a relationship to
the real. By being betwixt and between, it becomes a play
space for thinking about the real world’ (p. 165)
 Compare with her discussion about the liminal nature of
neighbourhood spaces in Turkle (2008)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.

5. Virtual Relationships
 Human interactions with Artificial Intelligence
 Blade Runner
 HAL 9000
 Alien
 The Turing Test
 http://www.turinghub.com/
 ‘Watch for a nascent culture of virtual reality that underscores the
ways in which we construct gender and the self, the ways in which we
become what we play, argue about and build. And watch for a culture
that leaves new space for the idea that he or she who plays, and
builds might be doing so with a machine’ (p. 167)
Turkle, S. (1994) Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDS.
Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 summer.

6. Always-On/Always-On-You: The
tethered self
 Connection to technology and availability – always communicating
electronically
 Connectedness is essential and working technology must be close
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

7. Always-On/Always-On-You: The
tethered self
 ‘Increasingly what people want out of public spaces is that they offer a place
to be private with tethering technologies’, mad people talking, shouting,
gesturing, laughing to themselves – all tolerated as the norm now
 ‘neighbourhood spaces themselves become liminal, not entirely public, not
entirely private’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

8. Redefined presence
 The act of using a mobile phone ‘transports’ the user ‘to the space of the new
ether, virtualised’
 ‘the rapid movements from physical to a multiplicity of digital selves’ described
through the metaphor of ‘cycling-through’
 ‘With cell technology, rapid cycling stabilises into a sense of continual co-presence’
(p. 122)
 ‘Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am psychologically tuned to the connections that
matter’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

9. Grammars of ‘transport’
 A new set of signs that signify a person is ‘elsewhere’
 Looking at their lap
 Speaking into the air
 Loss of focus
 Shift of gaze
 ‘They are transported to the space of a new ether, virtualised’ (p. 123)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

10. New Grammars of communication
 SMS – ‘It is hard to get too many words on the phone keyboard and there is
not cultural incentive to do so
 Online, On my phone, On Facebook, On the Web – a suggestion of a ‘tethered
self’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

11. New connectedness
 ‘Ignoring those one is physically “with” to give priority to online others’
 Sitting in international conferences checking email
 Tweeting about conference speakers’ presentation
 ‘these conversations are as much about jockeying for professional position … as
they are about what is being said at the podium’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

12. Embodied Status
 Remote connectedness enables you to work in exotic locations
 Tethering to technology helps you ‘love your body’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

13. Community and ‘friends’
 Size of one’s contact list important
 How many friends or followers do you have?
 ‘we are wanted by those we know … the potential, as yet unknown friends
who wait for us in virtual places’
 Being more attached to the site rather than to the acquaintances within it
 ‘The site becomes a transference object: the place where friendships come
from’
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

14. Working on identity
 ‘We never “graduate” from working on identity; we simply work on it with
the materials we have at hand’
 People aren’t tethered to their devices. They are tethered to the
gratifications offered by their online selves
 Affection, conversation, new beginnings, vanit
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

15. Working on identity
 ‘More than the sum of their instrumental functions, tethering devices help to
constitute new subjectivities.
 Powerful evocative objects for adults, they are even more intense and
compelling for adolescents, at that point in development when identity play
is at the centre of life’ (p. 125)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

16. Creating Personae
 Avatars in games
 Web pages
 Facebook profiles
 Playlists
 Sharing bookmarks (delicious)
 ‘Multiple playlists reflect aspects of self. And once you have collected your own
music, you can make connections to people all over the world to whom you can
send your songs’ (p. 126)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

17. Inner History
 Relationships to artifacts and the promise of connections
 Removal of ability for single reflection
 ‘The anxiety that teens report when they are without their cell phones or their link
to the internet may not speak so much to missing the easy socialability with others
but of missing the self that is constituted in those relationships’ (p. 127)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

18. Validation
 A mobile phone allows us to be always there, always connected
 Validation of self is permanently available
 At the moment of having a thought or feeling, one can have it validated
 Or one may need to have it validated
 It may need validation to become established
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

19. Self and reflection
 Mobile phone culture, despite being a talk culture, is ‘not necessarily a
culture in which talk contributes to self-reflection’
 Empathetic interchanges reduced ‘to the shorthand of emoticon emotions’
 “who am I?” and “who are you?” reformatted for the small screen; flattened
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

20. The Tethered Adult
 Watching life ‘scroll by’
 Stress of responisibility to keep up with email
 Always being behind
 Taking the office with you – everywhere
 Need for immediate response - even when a wise response requires reflective
time.
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

21. Taking time
 Checking email, making/receiving phone calls
 In a taxi
 On a train
 At the airport
 No time for self
 Continual partial attention
 (always listening to a device)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

22. The monitored self
 Foucault – citizens who do not need to be watched
 We try to keep up with our lives as they are presented to us by a new
disciplining technology
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Think about Foucault’s notion of “governmentality”

23. Boundaries
 Losing partners, parents, friends, children for a few seconds or a few minutes
to an alternative reality
 ‘We live and work with people whose commitment to our presence feels
increasingly tenuous because they are tethered to more important virtual
others’ (p. 131)
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

24. Self shaped by technology
 Our technology reflects and shapes our values
 ‘The self is calibrated on the basis of what the technology proposes, by what
it makes possible, by what it makes easy’
 Yet we have created a communications culture that has decreased the time
available for us to sit and think interrupted
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Think about technology being “socially shaped and
socially shaping” (Raymond Williams in Buckingham,
2008).

25. Tethered to whom?
 We respond to humans and to objects that represent them
 We no longer demand that as a person we have another person as an
interlocutor
 Call centres
 Bill payments
 Intuitive software
 Games
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

26. The Future
 Robot carers
 Robot pets
 Does the provision on AI carers/pets remove the need for human contact?
 Relational artifacts are the latest trajectory of the tethered self
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

27. Relationships and Self
 Relational artifacts represent their programmers but are given autonomy and
primitive psychologies
 What is an authentic relationship with a machine?
 What are machines doing to our relationships with people?
 What is a relationship?
Turkle, S. (2008) Always on/always on you: The tethered self. In Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, James
E. Katz (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press