Speakers Bios & Abstracts

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Trained as a sociologist and a licensed clinical psychologist, she is the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Referred to by many as the “Margaret Mead of digital culture”, Professor Turkle has investigated the intersection of digital technology and human relationships from the early days of personal computers to our current world of social networks, mobile connectivity, and sociable robotics. Turkle is the author of six books and three edited collections, including a trilogy of three landmark studies on our relationship with digital culture: The Second Self, Life on the Screen, and Alone Together. Her most recent book is Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age (Penguin Press, October 2015). There, she argues that digital culture has encouraged a flight from conversation that has led to a crisis in empathy, but that conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, can help us recover lost ground. Among other honors, she is a recipient of a Guggenheim and Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, a Harvard Centennial Medal, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.