Turkle might have interesting insights into users of technology, but her reliance on psychoanalytical (nonfalsifiable) and Foucauldian theories renders her overall conclusions suspect. She writes as if “technology” were a force outside human agency. She embraces a belief in humanity buffeted by technology, as if it were a natural force like the weather. She appeals to our natural resentments about things we don’t personally control without interrogating our agency in creating and using technologies.
Also she discriminates among technologies: she ignores the history of tech moral panics (electricity was once thought to lead to rape!).
For better or worse, Turkle's career began with a concentration on French theory and a focus on Deleuze and Guattari and the like (see here https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=83WNYauOa5AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA508&dq=turkle+anti+psychiatry+france&ots=EFEDdskGxw&sig=_X5Mr_vt6Rg-wxhmPmFdqq6yWnc#v=onepage&q&f=false). So she is definitely not overly concerned with the technical knowledge around computer OS. I do get the computer nerd exasperation in the same way I as a geek for the actual technical mechanicals of car manufacturing think some of the geopolitically-oriented and high theory views in the 1980s of concepts like small-batch products and how Just-In-Time production could be taken in a Japanese vis-a-vis American context were blind to some of the almost autistic specifics of manufacturing (in a way that actually mattered as you describe here with computers). That being said, I almost think her more theoretical background has enabled her ideas to have a long tail and apply across different iterations of the internet. Certainly on the notion of identity she was uncannily sagacious and stands heads-and-shoulders above almost all academic commentators in part because she wasn't ideologically motivated. Also, if you can grok Anti-Oedipus you can sort of grok anything in the humanities fields. Great piece
Foucauldianism at its worst can tautological or can be taken to a paranoid or unhelpfully nonspecific extreme, but IMO the reverse trend in "Cult Studs" to hail the supposed resistance and agency of the audience or salute the cultural products as an expression of that is much more inaccurate
Sure—that’s the Foucauld many of my colleagues embrace. But Turkle’s Foucauld is the deterministic version.
And the fan studies people buy into agency as including having power over creators—sometimes to a creepy extent. They valorize some bad behavior in the name of agency!
Turkle might have interesting insights into users of technology, but her reliance on psychoanalytical (nonfalsifiable) and Foucauldian theories renders her overall conclusions suspect. She writes as if “technology” were a force outside human agency. She embraces a belief in humanity buffeted by technology, as if it were a natural force like the weather. She appeals to our natural resentments about things we don’t personally control without interrogating our agency in creating and using technologies.
Also she discriminates among technologies: she ignores the history of tech moral panics (electricity was once thought to lead to rape!).
For better or worse, Turkle's career began with a concentration on French theory and a focus on Deleuze and Guattari and the like (see here https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=83WNYauOa5AC&oi=fnd&pg=PA508&dq=turkle+anti+psychiatry+france&ots=EFEDdskGxw&sig=_X5Mr_vt6Rg-wxhmPmFdqq6yWnc#v=onepage&q&f=false). So she is definitely not overly concerned with the technical knowledge around computer OS. I do get the computer nerd exasperation in the same way I as a geek for the actual technical mechanicals of car manufacturing think some of the geopolitically-oriented and high theory views in the 1980s of concepts like small-batch products and how Just-In-Time production could be taken in a Japanese vis-a-vis American context were blind to some of the almost autistic specifics of manufacturing (in a way that actually mattered as you describe here with computers). That being said, I almost think her more theoretical background has enabled her ideas to have a long tail and apply across different iterations of the internet. Certainly on the notion of identity she was uncannily sagacious and stands heads-and-shoulders above almost all academic commentators in part because she wasn't ideologically motivated. Also, if you can grok Anti-Oedipus you can sort of grok anything in the humanities fields. Great piece
Yes, her work filters everything through Foucault—everything is a power relationship, human agency is barely present.
Foucauldianism at its worst can tautological or can be taken to a paranoid or unhelpfully nonspecific extreme, but IMO the reverse trend in "Cult Studs" to hail the supposed resistance and agency of the audience or salute the cultural products as an expression of that is much more inaccurate
Sure—that’s the Foucauld many of my colleagues embrace. But Turkle’s Foucauld is the deterministic version.
And the fan studies people buy into agency as including having power over creators—sometimes to a creepy extent. They valorize some bad behavior in the name of agency!
wait what words can't you post? feel free to DM me
autoexec.bat, config.sys. Very weird. It blocked the post until I removed them.
Sorry for alerting you in this annoying way it took me like an hour to figure out lol
strange, lemme see whats up. i assume some security measure gone awry
Ty!