author photo by Steven Klein

Biography

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé 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. Dr. Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She 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, forthcoming); and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997). Dr. Turkle recently explored the question of "Whither Psychoanalysis in Digital Culture" when she delivered the annual Freud lecture in Vienna in May 2002; she leads a large research project on the psychological impact of computational objects as they become increasingly "relational" artifacts. Dr. Turkle is studying a range of objects, including "affective" computer programs, humanoid robots, games that simulate people, creatures and societies, and robotic dolls and pets, currently being marketed to children and the elderly. Her other current research project in the area of "things and thinking" is an NSF-funded study of "Information Technologies and Professional Identity" which looks at the impact of using screens and simulation technologies on a range of professions, from architecture to medicine. Dr. Turkle is currently completing a book, tentatively titled Simulation & Its Discontents, which looks at evolving relationships between people and technologies as well as their emotional, intellectual, and ethical implications.

Return to Sherry Turkle's Home Page.