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 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 most recently, Life on the Screen: Identity in
the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995;
Touchstone paperback, 1997) in which she
explores the psychology of computer-mediated
communication. Dr. Turkle
explored the question of "Whither
Psychoanalysis in Digital Culture?" when she delivered the annual
Freud lecture in Vienna in May 2002; she leads a 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. One current research project in the area of
"things and thinking" is an NSF-funded study of "Virtuality and Its
Discontents" 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 which looks at evolving relationships between people and
technologies as well as their emotional, intellectual, and ethical
implications.
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