Mit Professor Turkle To Discuss "Affective Computing"

Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak on "Intimate Machines: Human Identity and 'Affective' Computing" on March 28 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. A reception will follow.

The talk will explore a new set of identity effects of the computer presence that are associated with several new directions in the development of computer technology.

Computational toys and digital 'pets' affect how children sort through the question of what is alive and what is not, and about what is special about being a person. Recent work in building robots with emotional systems and screen agents using principles of 'affective computing' offer similar challenges to the world of adults.

Several questions emerge, says Turkle. How are we to conceptualize the nature of our attachments to interactive robots, affective computers, and digital pets? and second, how does interacting with these objects affect people's way of thinking about themselves, their sense of human identity, of what makes people special?

Turkle has written extensively on psychoanalysis and culture and on people's relationships with technology, especially computers; her work has been widely noted in both the academic and popular press. Her most recent book is Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995, 1997), which explored the psychology of computer-mediated communication. She continues to study the psychological impact of computational objects as they become increasingly "relational" artifacts.

Turkle, a graduate of Radcliffe College, studied with the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and earned a joint doctorate in Sociology and Personality Psychology from Harvard University. She is a graduate and affiliate member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, and a licensed clinical psychologist.

The event is one of a series of public lectures sponsored by the Institute's School of Social Science during the academic year 2000-01 in connection with a year-long exploration of "Information Technology, New Media, and the Social Sciences."