Reclaiming Conversation
MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle has spent four decades studying how people relate to machines, and Reclaiming Conversation is her book-length case that the smartphone is hollowing out the ordinary human conversation. Drawing on years of fieldwork in homes, schools, summer camps, and Silicon Valley offices, Turkle documents children who prefer texting to talking, families who keep phones on the dinner table, college students who avoid voice calls, and executives who email colleagues sitting in the same room. She organizes the book around the "three chairs" of Thoreau's Walden, solitude, friendship, and society, and argues that the loss of conversation in each costs us the empathy and self-knowledge they used to build.
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An MIT sociologist argues that the smartphone is hollowing out ordinary human conversation, with costs to empathy, solitude, and self-knowledge.
Reclaiming Conversation is Sherry Turkle's argument that smartphones and digital communication have eroded face-to-face dialogue, with consequences for empathy, education, and relationships. Drawing on her MIT research, Turkle calls for intentional spaces for in-person conversation.
Reading Alone Together (2011) builds context but is not required. Reclaiming Conversation (2015) updates and extends the argument. Either works as an entry point to Sherry Turkle's work on technology and relationships.
Reclaiming Conversation was written by Sherry Turkle, published in 2015 by Penguin Publishing Group.
Reclaiming Conversation is 448 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Reclaiming Conversation takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Reclaiming Conversation is a standalone novel by Sherry Turkle, not part of a series.
Reclaiming Conversation is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
