1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910782113503321

Titolo

The inner history of devices / / edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : MIT Press, ©2008

ISBN

0-262-29156-8

0-262-28524-X

1-4356-7728-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (219 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

TurkleSherry

Disciplina

303.48/3

Soggetti

Technology - Psychological aspects

Medical technology - Psychological aspects

Computers - Psychological aspects

Internet - Psychological aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [172]-197) and index.

Nota di contenuto

The prosthetic eye / Alicia Kestrell Verlager -- Cell phones / E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman -- The patterning table / Nicholas A. Knouf -- Television / Orit Kuritsky-Fox --

Sommario/riassunto

"For more than two decades, in such landmark studies as The Second Self and Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle has challenged our collective imagination with her insights about how technology enters our private worlds. In The Inner History of Devices, she describes her process, an approach that reveals how what we make is woven into our ways of seeing ourselves. She brings together three traditions of listening--that of the memoirist, the clinician, and the ethnographer. Each informs the others to compose an inner history of devices. We read about objects ranging from cell phones and video poker to prosthetic eyes, from Web sites and television to dialysis machines. In an introductory essay, Turkle makes the case for an "intimate ethnography" that challenges conventional wisdom. One personal computer owner tells Turkle: "This computer means everything to me. It's where I put my hope." Turkle explains that she began that conversation thinking she would learn how people put computers to work. By its end, her question has changed:



"What was there about personal computers that offered such deep connection? What did a computer have that offered hope?" The Inner History of Devices teaches us to listen for the answer. In the memoirs, ethnographies, and clinical cases collected in this volume, we read about an American student who comes to terms with her conflicting identities as she contemplates a cell phone she used in Japan ("Tokyo sat trapped inside it"); a troubled patient who uses email both to criticize her therapist and to be reassured by her; a compulsive gambler who does not want to win steadily at video poker because a pattern of losing and winning keeps her more connected to the body of the machine. In these writings, we hear untold stories. We learn that received wisdom never goes far enough."