Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A licensed clinical psychologist, she is the author of six books, including Alone Together and the New York Times best-seller Reclaiming Conversation, as well as the editor of three collections. A Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, TED speaker, and featured media commentator, she is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Sherry Turkle’s memoir, The Empathy Diaries, is a beautiful book.
It has gravity and grace; it’s as inexorable as a fable; it drills
down into the things that make a life; it works to make sense of
existence on both its coded and transparent levels; it feels like
an instant classic of the genre.” —Dwight Garner, New York
Times
“The strong suit of The Empathy Diaries is the wonderful clarity
with which Turkle guides us through her intellectual development .
. . [a] compressed summary of Sherry Turkle’s intellectual progress
toward the study of 'how computers change not only what we do but
who we are' does not do justice to the pleasure a reader gets from
following it in the pages of The Empathy Diaries, where it is
recorded with a grace and lucidity that are inspiriting.” —Vivian
Gornick, New York Times Book Review
“Turkle opens up the archives of her life, such that she becomes a
subject to think with as much as an exemplary object about which to
think. Whether uncovering the secrets of her family (and secrets
are always multiple), examining the pain and joy of cross-class
sociality and education at Radcliffe, or recounting evenings spent
with Lacan, Turkle points her reader toward that which makes us
human: vulnerability and, of course, the self-reflexive capacity
for empathy. Along the way, Turkle offers an invaluable account,
both personal and critical, of how 'science and technology can make
us forget what we know about life.’” —Hannah Zeavin, Public
Books
“[A] transformational journey from an anxiety-infused childhood to
an adulthood devoted to psychological insight and excellence in
scholarship . . . Out of the ashes of the shame induced by her
mother’s insistence on lies and pretense, Turkle learned the value
of genuineness and empathy.” —Patricia Steckler, Drizzle Review
“If a book could carry a scent, The Empathy Diaries would waft
Chanel No. 5….Turkle’s narrative is skillfully assembled, like
pieces in a puzzle. She effectively blends the story of her growth
in self-awareness with her professional realization that computers
pose threats to the humans who have created them.”—Arthur Hoyle,
The New York Journal of Books
“Lively and accessible . . . [Turkle] deftly draws the characters
that populate her life and times–and what characters they are! With
a disarming simplicity that (mostly) exonerates her from
name-dropping, she introduces us to a roll call of some of the most
significant intellectuals of the mid-20th century on either side of
the Atlantic . . . an insightful autobiographical case-study in how
a personal and intellectual life can be mutually formative and an
astute cultural commentary on our times.” —Professor Lynn Frogget,
Journal of Social Work Practice
“A beautifully wrought memoir about how emerging technology makes
us think and feel [. . .] Anyone who studies, develops, or produces
technology—and anyone who uses it—will gain crucial insights from
this profound meditation on how technology is changing us. A
masterful memoir by a pioneering researcher and incisive thinker.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“[R]evelatory and forthright . . . Turkle's candor and transparency
are totally in keeping with her personal and professional
commitment to understanding human emotional motivation and our
capacity for empathy, not only towards others but also towards
ourselves.” —Booklist
“ [R]ichly detailed . . . Anyone who has felt the struggle to fit
in will identify with [Turkle's] story.” —Library Journal
"Since digital culture became part of our intimate lives, Sherry
Turkle has helped us understand our complex, evolving dance with
technology, using the power of data and analy- sis. Now, with raw
and refreshing authenticity, she shares her personal journey, which
serves as a powerful and poignant reminder that it is in our
relationships with one another—not technology—that we find our most
important source of meaning and healing." —Vivek H. Murthy, MD,
MBA, surgeon general of the United States, author of Together: The
Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
"In this beautiful, compulsively readable memoir, Sherry
Turkle, who has asked why we expect 'more from technology and
less from each other,' excavates the eras of her continually
surprising 20th century life. In her hands, empathy is the
instrument of knowledge, illuminating the uses and pleasures of
crucial human values now under threat. This is the story not only
of a woman but of her humane and exhilarating mind." —Honor
Moore, poet and memoirist, author of Our Revolution, a
Mother and Daughter at Midcentury
"Sherry’s life story is that of a woman who made her own way—both
in the academic world and in the larger cultural conversation—by
following her passions without fear and with tremendous integrity.
In so doing, she has helped us all understand a vital aspect of our
lives with much greater clarity. The Empathy Diaries is a case
study in courage and where it can take us." —Arianna Huffington,
founder and CEO of Thrive Global
"Sherry Turkle’s memoir is a page-turner, and I was so drawn
in by its vivid narrative and exquisitely drawn characters that it
took me a while to realize that this is also a strikingly original
book about empathy. Her searing encounters with a stark lack of
empathy in two of the most important men in her life—her
scientifically driven father and renowned first husband—led her to
the discovery that empathy is not simply an interesting research
topic or ‘feminine’ virtue but, as it became for her, a ‘strategy
for survival.’ The Empathy Diaries is a magnificent capstone to
Sherry Turkle’s studies of the human costs of our romance with
technology. Drawing on firsthand experience, she shows us how
empathy is a lifesaving necessity in human relations and,
potentially, a key to our survival as a species." —Carol Gilligan,
author of In a Different Voice and most recently, Why Does
Patriarchy Persist?
“In this brilliantly integrated memoir, Sherry Turkle traces her
metamorphosis from the gifted child of a disturbed man to the
preeminent ethnographer of digital culture. One part intellectual
history, one part daddy dearest, one part portrait of the critic as
a young woman, this is a one-of-a-kind page-turner. Bravo!” —Gish
Jen, author of The Resisters
“I’ve long marveled at the remarkable and inspiring career of
Sherry Turkle. Her path, so courageously interdisciplinary, has
been strewn with dazzling insights. And now, in just the kind of
brave and brilliant memoir one would expect from her, she gives us
her personal story, explaining how, in a mind like hers, the deeply
personal is transformed into ideas that can be shared by us all.”
—Rebecca Goldstein, MacArthur Prize Fellow; National Humanities
Medalist; author of Plato at the Googleplex
“This is a scintillating memoir. Turkle acts at once as
storyteller, ethnographer, and psychologist of her own life—one
stretching from a straitened Brooklyn Jewish girlhood shadowed by
an unspeakable secret to a womanhood of academic accomplishment
amidst the excitements of Radcliffe, Harvard, Chicago, Paris in the
years after the upheaval of ’68 and MIT just as our computer world
is born. Along the way she gives us a vivid account of ideas
crucial to the last half-century of intellectual life, tracing
their inner history with bracing clarity.” —Lisa Appignanesi,
author of Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love and Mad,
Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors
“By respecting her own emotional, social, and intellectual history
with careful—even loving—attention, Sherry Turkle shows what rescue
from the crisis of technological disconnect looks like. Intimate,
compassionate, and critical, her book instructs, edifies, and
heals. A paradigmatic personal narrative, yet The Empathy Diaries
is a tour de force of social science, saluting and protecting the
precious intangibility that no machine can match—the quality that
makes us human.” —James Carroll, author of The Truth at the Heart
of the Lie
“Like a Harvard educated Nancy Drew, Sherry Turkle searches her
past for clues to her true self and hits the mother lode in this
fascinating, fearless memoir. Her struggle with the legacy of
long-held family secrets as she forges her own unique path to
authenticity and forgiveness is a story countless women will
identify with. Reading The Empathy Diaries, I felt my mind—and my
heart—expanding. Sherry Turkle is not only a great writer and
teacher—she’s great company.” —Winnie Holzman, cowriter of the hit
musical Wicked; creator of the television series My So-Called
Life
“‘Use concrete events to think about large ideas. Use large ideas
to think about concrete events.’ Sherry Turkle follows the advice
of her professor, Samuel Beer, and The Empathy Diaries is the
compelling result. The stages of Turkle’s narrative unfold so
gracefully, in prose of such candor and clarity, that it’s easy to
overlook how many tasks this memoir performs. The Empathy Diaries
is about a childhood and a coming of age. It’s about a courtship
and marriage. It’s also about the progress of Turkle’s engagement
in the dynamic and overlapping fields in which this professor of
social sciences, science, and technology is a crucial,
authoritative, and, yes, empathetic voice. In every way, this is a
book about an education. Fans of Turkle’s earlier work will
certainly want to read The Empathy Diaries; but so too should
everyone struggling in the cyber maze in which we find ourselves. A
remarkable book.” —Rachel Hadas, PhD, Board of Governors Professor
of English, Rutgers University–Newark
“I read it with delight. An honest, insightful, compelling, and
sometimes painful account of the intellectual and emotional forces
that shaped Turkle into a pioneer in the study of digital culture
and how computers change the way we think about ourselves. Turkle’s
is not only a personal story, but also a story of our digital age.”
—Alan Lightman, Professor of the Practice of the Humanities, MIT;
author of Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine
“Sherry Turkle has been daring and original for a long time—bearing
witness to the emergence of artificial intelligence but also
writing forcefully, while surrounded by true believers at MIT,
about its limitations. In The Empathy Diaries, she dares even
further by investigating a tightly held family secret, affirming in
the process the wisdom of the human heart. The Empathy Diaries
tells a fascinating story—one that manages to be profound and
entertaining at the same time.” —Susan Quinn, author of Eleanor and
Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady
“Over the decades, Sherry Turkle has provided the most penetrating
analyses of the relations between the human and the computational
worlds. In a remarkably revealing memoir, Turkle explores the
personal as well as scholarly sources of her understandings and, in
the process, provides a brilliant panorama of our time.” —Howard
Gardner, author of A Synthesizing Mind
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