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Summary Of Programmed For Love

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In his 2011 The Chronicle Review article “Programmed for Love” Jeffrey R. Young interviews Professor Sherry Turkle about her experience with what she calls “sociable robots”. Turkle has spent 15 years studying robotics and its social emergence into society. After extensive research and experimenting with the robots, she believes that soon they will be programmed to perform specific tasks that a human would normally do. While this may seem like a positive step forward to some people, Turkle fears the worst. The article states that she finds this concept “demeaning, ‘transgressive,’ and damaging to our collective sense of humanity.” (Young, par. 5). She accredits this to her personal and professional experience with the robots. Turkle and her …show more content…

I have never interacted with a social robot like Kismet but if smartphones are considered social robots, I completely agree with Sherry Turkle. Sometimes I would rather sit on my iPhone than interact with people, and it scares me a little. I would say I am pretty dependent on my phone for entertainment when I do not have friends or family around. There is definitely a sort of “one-sided bond” that I have with my iPhone. When I cannot access my smartphone, I worry about how I am not in touch with my friends or with what is happening in the world. This can sort of tie in with how the 12 year-old felt when Kismet malfunctioned. I think it depends on how reliant on technology a person is to have the same worried feeling that I sometimes get. It is obvious that Turkle is not as worried about being away from technology as I am. During the interview, her email keeps going off and she seems unbothered by it. She even states that “30 people a minute don’t really need to be in touch with …show more content…

Most social robots are designed to interact with humans. For example, Kismet was designed specifically to react to social and emotional queues. Smartphones cannot react to a person the same way as Kismet is supposed to. People do not have the iPhone to strictly interact with the phone itself. When I use my phone, it is normally to interact with others that also have phones. Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are all apps that help people communicate with each other without being face-to-face. When someone is interacting with a social robot such as Kismet, it could technically be considered face-to-face because the communication is happening right in front of them. I personally believe that it is not hard to remember that a robot is just a bunch of metal and wires. Separating reality from technology should not be hard to do, but if social robots get to be more prevalent, I do see how attached society could

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