Cadayona, Joshua Lander S.

August 17, 2018

BSED ENGLISH 1
Ms. Jeeb T. Abelito

“CONNECTED BUT ALONE”

(Reaction/Reflection Paper)

Communicating face to face with each other means a huge thing for us. Seeing

each other talking, smiling, and even creating an enormous bond makes us feel like a

part of our life is complete every time that we’ve done this. Seeing our family interacting

with each other, our friends, loved ones, and even those people that we faced every day

is just normal for us. But, as the time goes by and our world is rapidly developing with

the help of technologies, communication and interaction between each other is also

decreasing rapidly. This is what Sherry Turkle, a Cultural Analyst, observed and

introduced to the people with her latest TED Talk entitled “Connected but alone”. This is

what I’ve reflected upon seeing it.

After seeing and hearing Sherry Turkle on her TED talks, it opens my knowledge

and understanding pertaining on the effects of technology and social media nowadays.

It also affects my feelings knowing that even I, a cellular phone user, was sometimes

becomes obsessed with the usage of it. Sometimes even when I’m along with my

friends, all of us were not speaking on each other but rather focusing on our cell phones

surfing and texting that we didn’t even noticed we’ve consumed useless times not

talking with each other. Turkle was not the only one who observed those various things
but so do I. Facing and encountering technology with my life made me observe its

characteristics as Ms. Turkle did.

Her speech surely made people realize the effects of technology on their lives.

What bothers me the most, is that why can’t we see the reality just as Ms. Turkle did?

According to her, she was sleeping with her cell phone beside her. It means she is also

using technology and social media just like us ordinary people. But, what made her

special, is that she is studying mobile communications and even interviewed hundreds

and hundreds of people both young and old that she made the observation more valid.

Her speech does not only focused on the problems of communication between

two people but also as a group. According on her example, on a company board

meetings, some people were not listening because they are doing emails and texts.

Based on her, people intend to do this every time that even the impossible cases like

texting while making an eye contact to a person is already possible. For me, these

scenarios doesn’t always occur on meetings but also on class hours. I’ve observed that

while the teacher was giving a lecture, some students tend to focus on their cell phones

just texting and surfing.

She added that even the parents on breakfast time intend to text and email

without giving prior notice on their children. Where’s the moral character of a being a

mother there? And in some occasions, their children will imitate what their parents did

because for them, their parents are the role model of the family. Ms. Turkle fearlessly

disseminate the speech along with the presence of various parents watching her. For

me, it’s the biggest reality that slapped their face that opens their mind.
 Of course, hearing her speech made me noticed some of her points in her

speech. One of it was when she said that these little devices in our pockets doesn’t only

changed what we do, but who we are. Why? Some people are always friendly greeting

each on other people when they bumped on them. But, those people nowadays tend to

focus on their technologies unknowingly noticing their surroundings. Witness how it

changed our lives and the way we live it. That’s why I’m strongly agree even on those

smallest points she presented.

Another one was that when she said “Texting, email, posting, all of these things

let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to

delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body — not

too little, not too much, just right.” And these instances currently occurs on relationship

between a man and a woman. A boy courting a girl requires effort and practice to say

what he feels about her and sometimes he began to make hesitations because he’s

afraid to make mistakes. That’s why with the help of these technologies, courting now

was made easy just by texting, emailing, and calling each other and we can even edit

the words and even our faces just to make things go on our way.

Ms. Sherry Turkle’s talk was really superb and an eye opener not just for me, but

also on all of us who witnessed her talk. Those words that she said was some heavy

stuff that makes us realize the reality that occurring these days. Therefore, in order to

make a difference, we can apply those words that she said to “restore” our previous

lives which is to talk and communicate face to face within each other because

personally, I think that our generation is so focused on and driven by technology. So let

us make a difference by starting to say “hello”.