MIT Professor, Computer Expert to Speak at Tufts
Public Invited to ‘CyberIntimacy/CyberSolitude’ Lecture Monday, April 26
Tufts University will present the 12th speaker in the Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture Series on April 26 at 5 p.m. in Distler Hall in the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Building, on Tufts University’s Medford/Somerville campus. MIT Professor Sherry Turkle will discuss “Cyberintimacy/Cybersolitude.” For free tickets to the lecture, contact Joanne Ferguson at 617-627-4239 or by e-mail at joanne.ferguson@tufts.edu. *Members of the news media who would like to attend should contact Suzanne McInroy at 617-627-4703 for a reserved seat.*
The Abby Rockefeller Mauzé professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, Turkle has studied the computer culture for more than two decades. In the September 20, 2006, edition of “New Scientist,” Turkle discussed the idea of cyberintimacy and cybersolitude.
“The challenge for this generation is to think of sociality as more than the cyber-intimacy of sharing gossip and photographs and profiles,” Turkle said in the magazine. “This is a paradoxical time. We have more information but take less time to think it through its complexity. We’re connecting globally but talking parochially.”
Established in 2004 by Richard E. Snyder, who is the former chairman and CEO of Simon and Schuster and a 1955 Tufts graduate, the Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture Series is designed to bring to Tufts speakers who challenge conventional wisdom in their professional work.
Turkle is a professor in the program in science, technology, and society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Turkle is the author of “Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud’s French Revolution” (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992); “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit” (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, 2005); and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet” (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paper, 1997).
Seminars and workshops at the Initiative on Technology and Self led to four edited collections, all published by the MIT Press, on the relationships between things and thinking. The first volume, “Evocative Objects: Things We Think With,” was published in Fall 2007. The second volume, “Falling for Science: Objects in Mind,” appeared in Spring 2008. The third volume, “The Inner History of Devices,” was published in Fall 2008. The final volume, “Simulation and Its Discontents,” followed in Spring 2009. Turkle is currently completing a book on robots and the human spirit based on the Initiative’s 10-year research program on relational artifacts.
Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the “subjective side” of people’s relationships with technology, especially computers. She is engaged in active study of robots, digital pets, and simulated creatures, particularly those designed for children and the elderly as well as in a study of mobile cellular technologies. Profiles of Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She is a featured media commentator on the effects of technology for CNN, NBC, ABC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline and 20/20.
Announcement from Tufts University