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New Directions in Humanities Research, 06-07

4:00 p.m. Thursday, November 16, 2006
Levinthal Hall

Sherry Turkle
Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology
"Cyberintimacies"

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Professor Turkle is the author of Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992); The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, 2005); and Life on the Screen:  Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997). Professor Turkle is currently completing a book on robots and the human spirit and editing a three volume collection on the relationship between things and thinking. The first two volumes, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With and Objects in Mind: Falling for Science, Technology, and Design will be published by the MIT Press in 2006. The third volume, The Inner History of Devices will follow in 2007.

Professor Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. Profiles of Professor Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She is a featured media commentator on the effects of technology for CNN, NBC, ABC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline and 20/20.

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