The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon, 1984. New York: Touchstone-Simon, 1985.

Rev. Susan Chace, The Nation 22 Sept. 1984: 248-50. Chace acknowledges ST an "anthropologist of 'computer cultures,'" looking at "a dramatic shift" in human self-perception: from seeing nonhuman animals as "'our nearest neighbors in the known universe'" to computers vying for this position. Moving through subcultures of heavy users, ST illustrates "a growing tendency to regard the mind as 'mechanized'" (Chace 248). Rev. Michael Rogers, Newsweek 6 Aug. 1984, who finds the book pretty positive even with the "'mind as machine'" model, since ST found many people using "computers to establish identity and gain self-awareness, or to achieve a feeling of mastery over their lives" (Rogers 69). For historical context on the "mind as machine" issue, see in this Category the entries for R. Decartes,[http://www.clockworks2.org/wiki/index.php? title=Descartes,_Réne_(mechanism:_cosmological_,_biological)] Materialism, Mechanism,[1] and B. Spinoza,[2] and the works cross-referenced there.

MIT Press has issued "A new edition of the classic primer in the psychology of computation, with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and extensive notes added to the original text": Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2005.

In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world. "Technology," she writes, "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think."[3]

RDE, initial; augmented 23Dec21