Turkle

Sherry Turkle.  Authenticity in the Age of Digital Companions.

1 Turkle defines Darwinian buttons as human-level interactions such as eye contact maintenance, tracking motion and the such.  She suggests that these forms of interaction lead to inauthentic senses of reciprocity in humans.  Do you agree with this tack, or do you believe that these interactions can be genuine tools in the grammar of human-machine interaction without elevating machines to the level of authentic, reciprocal companions? Explain.

2. Turkle suggests on page 510 that Breazeal is one of the first humans ever to have experiences nurturance toward a robot (namely, Kismet).  Conduct a critical analysis of this whole type of claim to concretely examine Turkle’s tack: what are the exact actions taken, over time, by Breazeal in designing, fabricating, programming and running Kismet? How are there materially similar or different to those of other robotics grad students and professors? Is there something special here in this particular robot and robot-human relationship, or is this claim hyperbole? Dig here to construct a better idea for yourself of the depth and precision of this article’s comments.