The main of them can well be deemed the implication that, as it appears from the book, Turkle happened to believe that people’s obsession with the companionship-simulating technological gadgets/virtual reality is something necessarily ‘unnatural’ and therefore – counterproductive, in the psychological sense of this word: “Online, we can lose confidence that we are communicating or cared for. Critical RemarksĮven though Turkle indeed deserves to be given a credit, on the account of the book’s line of argumentation being discursively legitimate, there are nevertheless a number of drawbacks to how the author argues her point. This, of course, adds to the overall spirit of ‘technological pessimism’, emanated by the book in question. As she pointed out: “I believe that in our culture of (technology-induced) simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians – threat and obsession, taboo and fascination” (Turkle 16). Moreover, according to Turkle, the fact that humanity grows increasingly dependent on the technology’s ability to simulate the ‘desirable reality’, has a negative influence on the measure of the affected individuals’ mental adequacy. According to Turkle, the earlier mentioned state of affairs can hardly be considered thoroughly appropriate, because it results in the increased ‘atomization’ of Western societies, which in turn undermines these societies’ structural integrity from within. The author also brings readers’ attention to the fact that the Internet has long ago ceased being solely the instrument of informational transactions – as of today, it became nothing less of an ‘alternative reality’ for many individuals, who clearly prefer it to the surrounding de facto reality.
The simplification of relationship is no longer a source of complaint. To justify the validity of her suggestion, in this respect, Turkle points out to the phenomenon of more and more individuals deciding in favor of robots/robotized dolls, as their intimate companions: “We come to see what robots offer as relationship.
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