Upcoming: Alone Together

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I just read Sherry Turkle's excellent and provocative Alone Together and I plan to put up four wordy posts about it here, more "inspired by" than "review of", which will probably take me a month or so. Does anyone want to join in, either at your own blog or here, to make it a conversation instead of a monologue? If so, either leave a comment or by email  (here).

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9 Comments

  1. Kevin Donovan
    January 13, 2012 at 9:04 pm

    Would be fun to plan this ahead of time for some books and get a wider discussion going

  2. tomslee
    January 13, 2012 at 9:29 pm

    Yes it would. It seems that posts prompted by books or talks is what I’ve ended up doing, and Alone Together is something readers of this blog may well have read so I suggested on the off chance. It’ll take a while to get my posts in order anyway.
    Suggestions for provocative books? I don’t think they would need to be shiny and new to be interesting.

  3. Seth Finkelstein
    January 14, 2012 at 2:37 am

    For the near future, Rebecca MacKinnon’s upcoming “Consent of the Networked” looks like it’ll be very interesting.

  4. Paul C
    January 14, 2012 at 5:21 am

    I’d love to, but you know me. Posting is erratic, temper even more so…

  5. Evan
    January 14, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    I suspect I might be a negative voice, going from the synopsis, if you’re in need of one. But I doubt that I could even finish the book before the first of feb.

  6. Evan
    January 14, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    Having now read the excerpt, I am pretty sure I am a guaranteed critical voice, unless the book turns out to be less of a wasteland of people-doubting than its intro implies.

  7. mtraven
    January 14, 2012 at 8:26 pm

    I put up a review awhile back http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2011/01/performing-ourselves.html and would be happy to expand on it here. Hm, I see that was actually a reaction to her appearance on the Colbert Report. So maybe I still need to pay more attention to the actual book.

  8. tomslee
    January 14, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    Thanks everyone for the responses – more than I expected (see also Tom Stafford’s fine rant here). I sympathise with Tom and mtraven’s responses to (mainly) part 2 of the book (networks), which is a bit weak, but I really liked part 1 (robots) and will try to explain why.
    As for joint posting, maybe a better idea would be to do something with a bit more notice, as Kevin says, and Seth’s suggestion of Rebecca McKinnon’s book (link) sounds like a good one. Anyone wanting to share posts (here or among blogs) on that in March/April timeframe, let’s do so and see where it goes.
    Fair warning – readership of this blog is “select”, by which I mean not very high.

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