The Inner History of Devices
This 2008 essay collection, edited by Sherry Turkle, examines devices ranging from pacemakers to ham radios through the personal histories of the people who used them, arguing that everyday technology is bound up with memory, loss, and identity in ways that are easy to overlook when discussion focuses only on a device's function. Several essays consider how attachment to a device can substitute, in small ways, for attachment to people. The book extends Turkle's long-standing argument that machines are never psychologically neutral. TechKids Foundation includes it as further background on Turkle's research tradition connecting technology design to emotional life, part of the intellectual groundwork for her later, more pointed arguments about children, smartphones, and social withdrawal.
Turkle, Sherry, ed. The Inner History of Devices. MIT Press, 2008.
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