Living in a Fake World

In Sherry Turkle's interview she discusses how there has come to be somewhat of a "second life" and this is seen in computer and video games all across the world today. Kids and even adults get so wrapped up in these games as Turkle points out, that they begin to feel as though that robot that is in the video/computer game is an actual person. Turkle studied that people who are playing these games and get saved by one of the robot's in the game, tend to actually feel something for that particular robot and then start to feel as though they have humanistic features and feelings and so on. Turkle goes further to say that these relationships are not between the person playing the game via the machine to another person, this relationship between the person playing the game is to the actual robot. I agree with Sherry Turkle in this sense because I have watched many of my guy friends sit and play these video games all day long. They start to become part of the world they are playing in and actually communicate to the screen as though the robot will talk back to them and give them answers. People these days loose themselves in these games and loose a sense of reality as well. They would much rather become "friends" with robots and "live" in a world that does not exist than live and communicate in the real world with real people.

I feel as though this is similar to what Turkle was stating about technologies and how people become a part of the technology themselves. When she looks at losing a phone and how people feel as though they lost everything and cannot survive. People have become so wrapped up in technologies and the uses of them they put their lives into these phones, computers, video games, etc that they start to lose a sense of what reality is and have a hard time determining what is real and what is not. I can relate to the loosing the iPhone section of what Turkle was talking about, since I have a tendency to lose my phone a lot. It is possibly the worst feeling in the world because, as Turkle points out, everything of mine is on my phone, all of my contacts, e-mail, social networking sites, music, etc. To lose all of that is to almost lose oneself. We have come to rely on technologies so much that without them we are lost. Turkle makes a great point that people almost can't feel their feelings, unless they are connected, as seen in a phone or even a video game.