During the 1950s at MIT’s Lincoln Lab, under the guidance of the “father of the internet”, J.C.R. Licklider, there was an effort to study the “ergonomics” of the computer; that is, how to best design the man-machine interface of this relatively new technology – including how the operator’s console could be optimized, how much information to show on the screen, the size of the letters and symbols, the shape of knobs, etc. The whole idea was to make the computer more physically and psychologically comfortable for the operator to interact with.
For example, one of the innovations coming out of this study was a light pen that enabled an operator to point at something on the screen and cause some action to occur for, for instance, a military aircraft. This was the forerunner of the computer mouse in common use today.
Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT, and editor of a compilation of essays, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, takes this concept beyond the computer to show how humans react to objects, and how those objects evoke emotional and creative impulses. Within this series of essays, “Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.”
Looking for a moment at computers specifically, the Boston Globe noted that in 1976, when the Brooklyn-native and Harvard-educated Turkle first arrived at MIT to teach the sociology of science, she quickly noticed how the still-new computer was becoming part of the fabric and language of daily life. When she probed deeper, she found “there was a real passionate attachment to the computer, a possibility to project yourself into the machine.”
Over six years, from 1978 to 1984, Turkle, thinking that computers were more intertwined in human life and psychology than was generally thought, interviewed a wide sample of programmers, students and children. Her conclusion: that the computer was far more than just the “tool” many of her respondents believed.
Also in 1984, the year she published her study, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Apple introduced the Macintosh, which, along with the Apple “Lisa”, popularized the graphic user interface, which did not require the operator to learn a programming language. At that point, the stage was set for an unprecedented experiment in human-computer interaction. How intimate the two would become was anyone’s guess.
But at this point in history, we are coming to a greater understanding of the extent of this intimacy. With the evolution of computer technology, including the internet, interactive phones and other computer-related gadgets, it now seems almost unbelievable that those in her study would question her questions; but in the intervening years, the concept of computer psychology has come to be a generally accepted concept.
As founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Turkle has continued to probe the social side of the digital revolution. She’s now working on a book about how devices like the iPhone, which are seemingly always on one’s person, affect how we organize and relate to our daily lives.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Turkle, when asked about which object she most clearly “thinks with”, replied “Microsoft Word.” “I have it internalized. When I want to think at my best, I need Word in front of me. It’s become a part of how I think.”
All of Turkle’s books are currently available at MIT Press: http://mit.mitpress.edu
– Christopher Hartman
