Gopnik Turkle essay Robotic and emotions

Robotic Emotions Time will inevitably affects the way we view the world around us. As time moves on so to does ones opinions and views on the world around. Transitioning through age also affects our view on reality. In Alison Gopnik’s “Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?” she shows us the difference between how children and adults perceive things. At the same time in Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together” we are shown how growing technology affects are views on reality. When one combines the ideas of both Turkle and Gopnik, they see a correlation between technology’s growing influence and the rate at which your view of reality changes. Turkle reveals how a gap in age might affect a changing view of reality. During a trip to the American Museum of Natural History with her daughter Rebecca, they encounter the Galapagos Island tortoises. To her surprise Rebecca thought it would be better if the tortoises were robotic instead of being real. Turkle explains “She said she thought it was a shame to bring turtle all this way from its island home in the Pacific, when it was just going to sit there in the museum, motionless, doing nothing. Rebecca was both concerned for the imprisoned turtle and unmoved by its authenticity”. Furthermore Turkle was surprised to find that other children shared the same opinion as Rebecca. This shows how a gap in age can affect the way we view the world. In addition Gopnik further shows how a slight gap in age can change our view of reality. In an experiment with babies and stacking ring, one of the rings was a taped over to prevent it from being stacked. When a fifteen month old baby tried to stack the fake ring Gopnik states “He would stack some of the rings, look carefully at the taped-over one-and then try it on the post. And then try it on the post again…” The fifteen month old baby could not comprehend the idea of a rigged ring. On the other hand, an eighteen month old baby saw that the ring would not work without even attempting