Notably, “Flight from Conversation” is one of the essays written by Sherry Turkle, one of the professors at the Massachusetts Institution of Technology. It depicts her research on technology and communication. She uses the essay to address the popular audience living in the current generation, influenced by advancements in technology. Focusing on the technological universe from Turkle’s research, she dramatically expresses its effects on people. “I have studied technology of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances” (Turkle, 359). This shows that Turkle, from her essay she captures the greater audience with technological knowledge.
Nevertheless, Turkle also shows the targeted audience by mentioning activities at home, such as families sitting together, texting and reading email, and at the workplace where executives rely on texting during the board meeting. Moreover, in the essay, Turkle refers to a 16-year-old boy whose total concentration is always on texting in almost everything he says. This clearly shows that Turkle’s message targets everyone regardless of age as the audience.
Turkle points out some specialized materials such as mobile phones, which provide access to Facebook and Email, thus connecting various people from different places. Therefore, through this technological material that allows connection, Turkle further explains both the negative and positive roles executed by the technology. She expresses how technology affects people’s conversations as it connects many people and denies them a chance to speak their discussions well. These portray the pitch as Turkle tries to influence people to understand the effects of technology on communication in today’s world.
Moreover, complaints are executed from Turkle’s much concern with the established relationship between people and technology. Most people assume machines to be taking care of them by providing automatic listeners. Therefore, they tend to rely mainly on devices for companionship, and the researchers are inventing social robots of all kinds solely to act as companionship. However, the heavy reliance on technology by expecting more from it than what we expect from others significantly raised concern in Turkle, and it served as a potential complaint. Moreover, from the use of digital devices to connect people, mostly conversation is interrupted as complete information is not conveyed but instead fastened to aid in ramping volume and velocity online connections. Furthermore, heavily relying on technology by constantly connecting to reduce loneliness is one of the factors that raised complaints since the action was opposite, which prompted Turkle to address the issue.
Turkle shaped her ideas and attitudes from experience obtained from the current generation, which embraced technology in conversation. During that period, she wrote the essay solely to address myriads of challenges posed by technology use in various sectors such as at the workplace, homes, and even at learning institutions. Also, from observing how people failed to report at the workplace and even when face-to-face communication was interrupted, she realized those moments motivated her to express her attitudes and ideas.
Ultimately, in the essay, Turkle depicts how individuals’ thoughts on technology have turned to something opposite. In her writing, she chose to express the effects of over-relying on technology, which impacts individual lives by affecting their conversation. She addresses these because due to the increased demand for machines and the invention of robots for companionship, individuals are at high risk of spending most of their time with machines and robots. Assuming that they will comfort them more than humans, thus losing confidence in being there for one another. Moreover, individuals are also at risk of failing to communicate well since conversation through devices denies one expressing their ideas well, and everything is fastened. However, in adherence to her opinions in the essay, she believes that it will help to improve our relationships with our fellow humans, and people will live to appreciate the kind of companionship provided by other humans rather than machines. Also, failure to believe in Turkle’s opinions in the essay; she believes that we will experience a lot of loneliness as we continue relying heavily on technology to reduce loneliness.