Sherry, just this week I searched up your name to see whether you had added your essential voice to the current AI conversation! Thank you for bringing your work from *Reclaiming Conversation* back to the forefront; it has never been more urgent than now. My husband and I have been writing on navigating daily life in the Machine Age with a focus on the importance of human connection and support a tectonic shift in our relationship to technology. We lead annual community digital fasts, and provide practical guidance for turning away from screens and toward each other (The 3Rs of Unmachining https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/the-3rs-of-unmachining-guideposts). We will be bringing your work back into conversation, espcially as it relates to parent-child relationships.
The deliberate targeting of children by these techno bros, like Meta, is particularly alarming. They are taking the once upon a time innocent game of pretend that children love to play, turning it into an imaginary friend and confidante, for what is nothing more than a method of mining the very souls of the most innocent among us for data collection. It is diabolical in the most literal sense, if you ask me, and should be against the law. LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!!
This is absolutely beautiful prose on tech and the ills of generative AI. The downfall of our cognitive minds and thinking makes me realize that one day, there’s a chance that our minds won’t be capable of producing such vivid beauty.
What I have found to be profoundly discouraging is when people who I care for won't put down their device regardless of the setting. Just like an addict needs an intervention of loved ones who come together and let the addict know they need help, we need interventions for screen addicts. What's tricky is finding a group who isn't addicted to their own screens.
Excellent, Sherry! I know people who replace human companionship with dogs and/or cats, but chatbots are a much higher levels of that. Where will this take humanity?
As someone who never got a cell phone I've watched the progression of its eventual dominance over our social relations with amusement and, increasingly, dismay. I concluded that the phone is simply more interesting than people. The reasons for that stem from the degraded nature of conversation. More often than not we don't really converse, we exchange rants. Intimacy, that which makes conversation intriguing, has gone by the by because our appetite for it has atrophied or perhaps, for the young, they've never experienced it.
We have mixed everything up. We have put results in front of causes, profits in front of needs. We have turned the whole world upside down. We have let skilful unemployable useless eaters (“social manipulators”) to create advertising and manage public perception as a mandatory one-for-all worldview.
Normally, we have a certain need and we are trying to find ways to satisfy this need. Social manipulators destroy this order. They create worships of needs and spread them all around. Once you are caught, they will sell you ready-made ways to reach for this need.
There is no conversation. The conversation is blocked by the tyrannical imposition of one viewpoint across all potential recipients (victims). It’s a one-way transmission of paid ideas and solutions. No, you cannot create cheaper or more efficient ideas or solutions. Obviously, you must not create really useful ideas and solutions.
If AI has a conversation with you that’s indistinguishable from conversations you have with people it means the people you’re talking with are artificial. Stop talking to fake people. That would be all the fake people coming out of universities, all politicians, judges, bankers, police.
Anyone who wants a preview of the world these tech bros are very deliberately ushering in should read The Machine Stops, a novella by EM Forster written over a century ago.
Quote:
“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.”
I have been a fan of Sherry Turkle for a decade, and thank you for this article, she is more eloquent than ever. As a person in my 70's, I have increasingly felt confused and isolated in our digital world, and particularly alarmed by the unleashing of AI. I'm an artist who works primarilly with masks, and many times I've reflected that so much of our conversation/exchange has to do with facial and body gestures, the light in one's eyes, the emphasis upon spoken words, the habitat and context within which conversational participants interact, even the subtle energetic fields that surround any living body - smell, pheromones, even auras. So much goes on when we interact with another embodied human being
Bravo! Bravo! Thanks Sherry for explaining how human relationships are special and necessary to a healthy satisfying personal life. The pretense of empathy leads avoids the necessary frictions you describe, while genuine human connections give us so much more.
Sherry, just this week I searched up your name to see whether you had added your essential voice to the current AI conversation! Thank you for bringing your work from *Reclaiming Conversation* back to the forefront; it has never been more urgent than now. My husband and I have been writing on navigating daily life in the Machine Age with a focus on the importance of human connection and support a tectonic shift in our relationship to technology. We lead annual community digital fasts, and provide practical guidance for turning away from screens and toward each other (The 3Rs of Unmachining https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/the-3rs-of-unmachining-guideposts). We will be bringing your work back into conversation, espcially as it relates to parent-child relationships.
Thank you again for adding your voice!
Her emphasis on “embodied” intelligence as an essential element in maintaining our humanity is a contribution of immense proportions.
The deliberate targeting of children by these techno bros, like Meta, is particularly alarming. They are taking the once upon a time innocent game of pretend that children love to play, turning it into an imaginary friend and confidante, for what is nothing more than a method of mining the very souls of the most innocent among us for data collection. It is diabolical in the most literal sense, if you ask me, and should be against the law. LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!!
This is absolutely beautiful prose on tech and the ills of generative AI. The downfall of our cognitive minds and thinking makes me realize that one day, there’s a chance that our minds won’t be capable of producing such vivid beauty.
This is why the best part of my week is being part of a community choir, highly recommend it to reclaim the conversation.
What I have found to be profoundly discouraging is when people who I care for won't put down their device regardless of the setting. Just like an addict needs an intervention of loved ones who come together and let the addict know they need help, we need interventions for screen addicts. What's tricky is finding a group who isn't addicted to their own screens.
Excellent, Sherry! I know people who replace human companionship with dogs and/or cats, but chatbots are a much higher levels of that. Where will this take humanity?
As someone who never got a cell phone I've watched the progression of its eventual dominance over our social relations with amusement and, increasingly, dismay. I concluded that the phone is simply more interesting than people. The reasons for that stem from the degraded nature of conversation. More often than not we don't really converse, we exchange rants. Intimacy, that which makes conversation intriguing, has gone by the by because our appetite for it has atrophied or perhaps, for the young, they've never experienced it.
We have mixed everything up. We have put results in front of causes, profits in front of needs. We have turned the whole world upside down. We have let skilful unemployable useless eaters (“social manipulators”) to create advertising and manage public perception as a mandatory one-for-all worldview.
Normally, we have a certain need and we are trying to find ways to satisfy this need. Social manipulators destroy this order. They create worships of needs and spread them all around. Once you are caught, they will sell you ready-made ways to reach for this need.
There is no conversation. The conversation is blocked by the tyrannical imposition of one viewpoint across all potential recipients (victims). It’s a one-way transmission of paid ideas and solutions. No, you cannot create cheaper or more efficient ideas or solutions. Obviously, you must not create really useful ideas and solutions.
If AI has a conversation with you that’s indistinguishable from conversations you have with people it means the people you’re talking with are artificial. Stop talking to fake people. That would be all the fake people coming out of universities, all politicians, judges, bankers, police.
https://nimerblogs.blogspot.com/2025/08/beyond-verbal-descriptions-my-dreams.html
Anyone who wants a preview of the world these tech bros are very deliberately ushering in should read The Machine Stops, a novella by EM Forster written over a century ago.
Quote:
“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.”
Thank you Sherry, for putting into words what I've been thinking but unable to articulate.
I have been a fan of Sherry Turkle for a decade, and thank you for this article, she is more eloquent than ever. As a person in my 70's, I have increasingly felt confused and isolated in our digital world, and particularly alarmed by the unleashing of AI. I'm an artist who works primarilly with masks, and many times I've reflected that so much of our conversation/exchange has to do with facial and body gestures, the light in one's eyes, the emphasis upon spoken words, the habitat and context within which conversational participants interact, even the subtle energetic fields that surround any living body - smell, pheromones, even auras. So much goes on when we interact with another embodied human being
Excellent article. Thank you. Cancel culture is similar to social media. Both are profoundly harming relationships and destroying families.
Bravo! Bravo! Thanks Sherry for explaining how human relationships are special and necessary to a healthy satisfying personal life. The pretense of empathy leads avoids the necessary frictions you describe, while genuine human connections give us so much more.