Documentation Over Experience?

Catching up on stuff saved in my RSS reader …

From “The Documented Life,” a recent essay by MIT professor Sherry Turkle in the New York Times:

I’ve been studying people and mobile technology for more than 15 years. Until recently, it was the sharing that seemed most important. People didn’t seem to feel like themselves unless they shared a thought or feeling, even before it was clear in their mind. The new sensibility played on the Cartesian with a twist: “I share, therefore I am.”

These days, we still want to share, but now our first focus is to have, to possess, a photograph of our experience … We interrupt conversations for documentation all the time …

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We don’t experience interruptions as disruptions anymore. But they make it hard to settle into serious conversations with ourselves and with other people because emotionally, we keep ourselves available to be taken away from everything …

I see the most hope in young people who have grown up with this technology and begin to see its cost. They respond when adults provide them with sacred spaces (the kitchen, the family room, the car) as device-free zones to reclaim conversation and self-reflection.

Do you agree with Turkle’s take? What are the implications for K-12 educators at a time when 1:1 and BYOT programs proliferate? Whose responsibility is this to teach?

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