Reader Response #1 for Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
Amanda Dulinky 1/23/13
Reader Response # 1, on Alone Together, written by Sherry Turkle.
Reading the first part of Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together has brought some interesting questions to my mind. I have often joked about friends of mine who play Massively Multi-player Online Games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, being addicted to their “game of choice”. And after reading & discussing this book, while also dealing with personal issues that closely relate to this subject matter, I wonder if there isn’t actually some truth in those jokes. This line of thought has lead me to formulate a couple of questions on the subject of technology addiction, and its affect on the real world lives of its users. My first question started out as “Is technology really addictive?” But, I realized that question is to broad to discus in this format, so I narrowed the scope of my question to the more defined “Are simulated online worlds, such as those found in MMOGs, addictive?” This question lead me to my second question, “ What kind of impact would this addiction have on the real lives of its users?”
I believe these are interesting and compelling questions, which could easily be discussed in a group setting or in essay form. This is due in part to the wide variety and availability of these types of games and the stereotyped reputation on their users, who are commonly know as “gamers”. I think that these questions could possibly illicit very strong feeling of both agreement and disagreement because of the popularity of these kinds of games. I also suspect that a lot of gamers might take exception to being classified as addicts, and would argue that it’s just a game and there
Reader Response # 1, on Alone Together, written by Sherry Turkle.
Reading the first part of Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together has brought some interesting questions to my mind. I have often joked about friends of mine who play Massively Multi-player Online Games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, being addicted to their “game of choice”. And after reading & discussing this book, while also dealing with personal issues that closely relate to this subject matter, I wonder if there isn’t actually some truth in those jokes. This line of thought has lead me to formulate a couple of questions on the subject of technology addiction, and its affect on the real world lives of its users. My first question started out as “Is technology really addictive?” But, I realized that question is to broad to discus in this format, so I narrowed the scope of my question to the more defined “Are simulated online worlds, such as those found in MMOGs, addictive?” This question lead me to my second question, “ What kind of impact would this addiction have on the real lives of its users?”
I believe these are interesting and compelling questions, which could easily be discussed in a group setting or in essay form. This is due in part to the wide variety and availability of these types of games and the stereotyped reputation on their users, who are commonly know as “gamers”. I think that these questions could possibly illicit very strong feeling of both agreement and disagreement because of the popularity of these kinds of games. I also suspect that a lot of gamers might take exception to being classified as addicts, and would argue that it’s just a game and there