I read this back in 2002 after reading an article by Turkle in a mass comm class. I should really come back to it and see how things have changed in ten years, and how Turkle's arguments have played out. ( )

Many interesting points, and a lot of angles covered, the only real flaw with this book is the abundance of separate directions that it takes the reader in, with similar conclusions. There is a tonne of good information here, and this is a perfect grounding book for how real and simulated (through digital media) life interact with one another. Also, loads of interesting case studies and stories. ( )

Meine Rezension befindet sich hier: MBI Blog ( )

An interesting study on the first effects of personal computers and Internet on the way we think our personal and our collective identities.
Turkle first introduces the notions of simulation, taking the computer one step further from the 'big calculator' and toward a more 'friendly machine' and 'helpful machine' popular view. She spends a lot of time discussing artificial intelligence and its possibilities, which is the weak point of the book, in my opinion. Many of the interventions she collects for this part of the book seem to bring nothing to the point she is trying to expose.

The last part of the study is definitively the most interesting, focusing on how Internet changed our lives and discussing the experience value that a 'multiple life on the web' can or can not really have.

This book was published in 1995 ; of course the author had no way of knowing how much the Internet would change again and what kind of new possibilities it would offer. I think that it what makes the interest of this book : you can really have a clear idea of the expectations people had of future technologies and compare with what actually happened. ( )

I picked up this book from the free pile on our office clean up day, and it's not too hard to see why it was discarded. Published in 1996, it is painfully dated, but at the same time still useful in examining how the Internet has changed people's behaviours. She could probably write a revised version that substitutes MUDs for MMPORGs, but the effect would still be the same - when people go online they reveal or create identities for themselves and how they use them either to simply "be" or safely explore parts of their identity or gender swapping. It's hard to recall how a relatively short time span has passed since the Internet became popular 10-12 years and just how much the technology has changed. Before I used to have to stay up to go online so as not to hog the phone line, now the Internet is "always on" in our house. Something so new has become so commonplace that one doesn't really think about how it got to this point, and Sherry Turkle's book is that explanation. ( )