Thank you. I’ve saved this for my summer teaching.

Another thing she misses, and it is not your job to catch everything, is that she is really only thinking about her personal experiences/desires and not those who are different. As an autistic adult, I learned to communicate through technology, though this was long before social media existed. I rely on social media (though not Facebook) to maintain and nurture my social network. I have many friends who I cannot meet in real life, not just because of distance, but because there are few people I can actually be around without melting down. And I usually fill up my load of meeting people at work and have no stamina left for friends. I have a great and wonderful social life because of technology, and I would be much more isolated without it.

I have many friends who, though neurotypical, also have problems engaging. They are bed bound or wheelchair users, who cannot or cannot afford to travel. Some can’t speak, some are isolated on small islands or on different sides of the planet. I’ve been lucky enough to fly to meet some of them, and even fly them to where I live for a day or two, but our lives and our endless long winded conversations happen online. They use speech to text so I can read them (listening to speech is too slow for me, so I have multiple simultaneous conversations).

Sherry thinks not so much of a simulacra, because her ideal location has happened to someone, and probably is happening right now, but as Lefebvre writes in his book on space, there was a brief location when we knew what this was like, and we’ve lost it, so we speak about it as if a simulacra. Or I was thinking of this as I read your analysis. Also, I was thinking of postman’s building a bridge to the 18th century, another harkening back to days when things were real. Or george steiner’s nostalgia for the absolute.

I’m rambling, but i’m on holidays, so that’s ok.

The one thing Turkle never seems to do is critically reflect on the wonderful conclusions she comes up with in her work. If she, as most of us try to do, sat down and came up with more lists of reasons as to why our arguments, logical structures and examples are full of shit, she might winnow away at her work and find something of substance to share.

Just like you did. In a very nice reflective and conversational tone. 🙂