Flat Time

Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together is subtitled “why we expect more from technology and less from each other”. Her narrative is divided into two parts. In the first half of the book, she discusses the rise of a variety of robots that mimic emotional connections with humans, from Tamagotchis and Furbies for the young, to Paro (a friendly seal) as a companion for the elderly. She delves into what it means to communicate and commune with another (or an "other"), and how our views of robot companions are moving from better-than-nothing to simply better. Her book was published in 2011, and the companion robots have only gotten better at the Turing test – not that we don’t intellectually recognize they are robots, but we respond to them as if they were “living” creatures.

The second half of the book is about our brave new networked world where we can immerse ourselves in living a second or third life in the cloud, siphoning away the time we spend in the present one. The virtual simulation Second Life is aptly named, and it is but one among many worlds where we can lose ourselves. As an anthropologist, Turkle conducts many interviews. A young law professor who spends the majority of his waking hours on the internet says that when he “leaves the bubble [it] makes the flat time with [his] family harder. Like it’s taking place in slow motion.” Turkle describes it as stepping out into a light that is too bright, and sadly the professor after dinner with his family “is grateful to return to the shade of his online life”.

Flat Time. Like a soda gone flat, real life seems to lack fizz – it moves at a slower pace. But on the Internet, boredom can be alleviated one click or one swipe away. Just move on to the next thing. In online action games, there is no flat time. You've got to keep moving. It reminds me of today’s action movies – the only genre that still gets me to the movie theatre for its immersive experience. When I come out, I am blinkering in the sunlight. Driving home, it seems I am driving too slowly – and maybe so is everyone else.  For a short while, the real world feels kinda blah. There aren’t fighting superheroes (I recently watched Captain America: Civil War) and the threat of an immediate crisis.

The lure of immersion is strong. Our minds are amazing! We can transport ourselves into other worlds that tickle the imagination, that trigger excitement, and that grab our interest. This weekend, I set aside five hours to immerse myself in Charlie Jane Anders’ new book All the Birds in the Sky, a coming together of the worlds of fantasy-magic and science fiction. The two main protagonists meet as kids, and then go separate ways – one has gifts of magic and is trained in a school of magic, while the other is a technological and engineering genius building devices of the future in the present. When they meet again, there is a war between science and magic. Can the two be reconciled, both people and systems? (I won’t give away the ending.)

While the premise of the book was interesting, I was disappointed by the lack of fleshing out the magical system. Regular readers of my blog know I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. I was looking for a revelation, but I guess I will have to keep working on this. On the other hand the author, given her background, is clearly versed in the science fiction aspects, and has a strong grasp of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, that interestingly meshed with my recent reading of Turkle’s book. However the story is really about two quirky characters as they stumble their way through life, intimacy, and relationships, while simultaneously tethered to magic and technology. (I predict that this book will be turned into a movie or TV series in the near future.)

Turkle delves into the issue of intimacy in our new world. In the conclusion she writes “My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy – about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude – the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude. To experience solitude you must be able to summon yourself by yourself; otherwise you will only know how to be lonely.”

Is this something my students today (most of who are in the traditional 18-22 age range) struggle with, more than those in the past? Turkle’s many interviews with teenagers is a very sobering aspect of the book. Having grown up with both the faster pace of technology and the ability to “hide” behind a screen, might they both crave and fear face-to-face intimacy and interactions more than those of us who did not grow up ensconced in a mobile network? After reading Turkle’s book, I noticed that when I walk through campus nowadays I hardly actually hear students talking on their cellphones. It’s all texting – convenient in more ways than one. Ten years ago, I would see and hear the students walking with the phones to their ears. Twenty years ago, students would walk together in groups while chatting in-person. But now the norm seems to be moving towards being Alone Together.

Actual relationships are messy. Human persons are involved. We can’t control the situation, and if we try, sometimes things get worse. Relating takes work. And time. And patience. Escapism has always been an option certainly further back than the theater of the Greeks. But as an avatar in an online world, our choices have multiplied exponentially. Why do the hard work of living in flat time when you can live livelier under circumstances you can control. The magic of real life has been substituted by the siren call of life in the Matrix. And as the bots become increasingly good at distracting us from the harsh realities, we will continue to cede more and more control to them, and maybe choose a life through Surrogates, as Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike do in the movie of the same name. Flat time seems so… well, flat. Turkle’s book is a cautionary tale that should awaken us to thinking carefully about where our technology is taking our humanity.