Sherry as Evocative Object
Yesterday, we celebrated Sherry Turkle’s 70th birthday with a Festschrift event, organized around a series of reflections on Sherry’s books. Below is the presentation I made about Sherry’s book The Second Self.
I first met Sherry in 1983. That’s 35 years ago, which means that I’ve known Sherry for exactly half of her life. When I met Sherry, she was just finishing her second book, The Second Self, which would be published the following year, in 1984. The book had a big impact on my thinking, so I’m very happy to have the opportunity to talk about the book — and about Sherry.
I came to MIT in 1983 on a one-year fellowship for science journalists. I had spent the previous five years writing about science and technology for Business Week magazine, much of the time in Silicon Valley, writing about the early days of the personal computer.
During my fellowship, I was allowed to sign up for any MIT courses I wanted to take. That fall, the fall of 1983, I took three courses that would change my life. One was the introductory computer-science course taught by Hal Abelson and Gerry Sussman. That course made me realize that computer programming is not just a method for giving instructions to computers; more importantly, it is a new way to represent and think about knowledge. I also took a seminar with Seymour Papert, and that course forever changed the way I think about children and learning — and it started me on my lifelong mission to develop new technologies to engage children in creative learning experiences. And I took a course from Sherry, which introduced me to what Sherry calls the “subjective side” of new technologies (as opposed to “instrumental” side). The course helped me understand and appreciate that new technologies don’t only enable us accomplish new tasks, they also change how we think about ourselves and how we relate to one another.
In the course, we read draft chapters from The Second Self. At first glance, a book about computers might seem like significant departure from Sherry’s previous book, Psychoanalytic Politics, which focused on the spread of Freud’s ideas in France. But the books have more in common than you might guess. Both books explore what happens when new ideas move out into the broader culture. In the case of Psychoanalytic Politics, it was psychoanalytic ideas moving into the broader culture; in the case of The Second Self, it was computational ideas.
Sherry had arrived at MIT, as a new assistant professor, at a very special time, just as the first personal computers and electronic toys were becoming available to the public. Technologies and ideas that had been percolating in the research labs at MIT for a couple decades were finally moving out to the broader culture. In The Second Self, Sherry acts as an anthropologist, studying how computational ideas spread in different subcultures. One chapter focuses on child programmers, another on personal-computer hobbyists, another on AI researchers.
Sherry studied these computational subcultures through her own distinctive lens, focusing not so much on what people were doing with computers but rather how their interactions with computers led them to think differently, to feel differently, to relate differently. I still have clear memories of sitting in Sherry’s class, reading draft chapters from the book, and feeling my own thinking starting to shift. Yesterday, as I was preparing for this talk, I went up to my attic and found my notebook from Sherry’s class in 1983. It’s fascinating for me to read through my notes from 35 years ago, and see my mind in transition, as I grappled with new and exciting ideas.
On the very first page of my notebook, from the first session on September 15, 1983, the first word that I underlined and highlighted was the word “evocative.” That seems appropriate, since the idea of the computer as an “evocative object” is at the core of The Second Self. In the book, Sherry defines an “evocative object” as “an object that fascinates …and precipitates thought.” In the case of computers, Sherry was particularly interested in how computers precipitate thought about thought, pushing us to think about our own thinking.
In the book, Sherry describes the growing influence of computational ideas and metaphors in everyday thought and everyday conversation. When psychoanalytic ideas moved into the broader culture, people analyzed their mis-statements as Freudian slips. In the early 1980s, as computational ideas moved into the broader culture, people viewed their mis-statements as information processing errors. Somehow, a bit flipped somewhere in their brain. People began talking about “debugging” their thinking, just as they debugged computer programs.
Sherry also describes how people began rethinking their place in the world. People had long compared themselves to other animals, distinguishing themselves as smarter and more rational than other animals. But computers shook things up. They, too, seemed intelligent and rational. So how could people distinguish themselves? What made people special? Increasingly, in what Sherry called the “romantic reaction” to the computer, people focused on their feelings and emotions. Rather than seeing themselves as smart animals, people began to see themselves as emotional machines. Sherry quotes a 12-year-old: “There will still be things for the people to do. They will run the restaurants, taste the food, and they will be the ones who will love each other, have families and love each other. I guess they’ll still be the only ones who go to church.”
Although 35 years is an eternity in the fast-changing world of new technologies, many of the issues that Sherry discusses in The Second Self are still relevant (perhaps more relevant) today than ever, as people ponder their role in a world of artificially-intelligent machines.
In taking the course with Sherry 35 years ago, I feel very fortunate that I not only made a connection with Sherry’s ideas but also with Sherry herself. After one class session, I arranged to talk with Sherry about my own career trajectory. I had graduated from college with a degree in physics, then worked for five years as a science journalist. By conventional measures, I was succeeding. But something was missing. I didn’t feel a passion for my work. I was ready for a change, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I felt unsettled. Very unsettled.
As I described my situation to Sherry, she told me about some of the twists and turns in her life. As a graduate student at Harvard, she had bounced back and forth between psychology and sociology, not sure which was the best match for her. Sherry became interested in psychoanalysis — but only medical doctors could receive psychoanalytic training at that point, so Sherry started taking pre-med courses. Sherry later dropped the idea of medical school and went to France to study the evolution of psychoanalytic culture.
Sherry said that, during those years, she had felt anxious much of the time, viewing her life as a scattered collection of pieces. But years later, she was able to look back and tell a coherent story, in which all of the pieces fit together. Each of her past experiences, in its own way, was contributing to her current work. Her study of psychoanalysis in France, for example, provided an unexpected but valuable framework for studying artificial intelligence at MIT. “Just wait,” she said to me. “Someday, you’ll be able to look back and tell a coherent story of how all of your pieces fit together.”
Part of me reacted skeptically. I thought: “That’s easy for Sherry to say, now that all of her pieces are fitting together. But will that ever happen for me?” At the same time, I found the conversation reassuring. It offered an existence proof of how scattered pieces of a life can later fit together. It’s possible. It happened for Sherry, maybe it could happen for me too.
Sure enough, I ultimately weaved my way to a career and life that I find exciting and satisfying. As Sherry predicted, I am now able to tell a story about of how my scattered pieces (interests in physics, journalism, computer science, children, learning) came together into a coherent whole (developing new technologies to engage children in creative learning experiences). I’ll always be grateful that Sherry was willing to share her story with me when I was feeling lost and disoriented. Now, I try to pass it on. When students come to me, worrying about their career and life choices, I often share Sherry’s story and my own.
Throughout the years, Sherry has continually pushed me to think in new ways. The Second Self pushed me to think in new ways about our relationship with technology. My conversations with Sherry in 1983 pushed me to think in new ways about my career trajectory. Later, after I joined the faculty at MIT, I co-taught courses with Sherry, and her ideas and her ways of thinking continued to challenge me, provoke me, inspire me.
Just as Sherry sees the computer as an evocative object, an object that fascinates and precipitates thought, I see Sherry as an evocative object. She constantly fascinates and precipitates thought. Of course, I realize that I’m opening myself up for some critical analysis by referring to Sherry as an “object”. But for me, Sherry is the ultimate evocative object. She endlessly fascinates and precipitates thought.
