We all spent a lot of time with technology-we drove to work, flew on airplanes, used telephones and computers, and cooked with microwaves. She warns that relatively small differences in technology design can have disproportionate effects on how humans relate to technology, to one another, and to themselves.ДЇor most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place. In a conversation with Coutu, Turkle discusses the psychological dynamics that can develop between people and their high-tech toys, describes ways in which machines might substitute for managers, and explains how technology is redefining what it means to be human. Coutu spoke with one of the fieldвЂ™s most distinguished scholars: Sherry Turkle, MITвЂ™s Abby Rockefeller MauzГ© Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the author of Life on the Screen, which explores how the Internet is changing the way we define ourselves. To learn more about this research, HBR senior editor Diane L. Universities like MIT and Caltech have been pouring millions of dollars into researching what happens when technology and humanity meet. The smartest people in technology have already started. If we want to be sure weвЂ™ll like who weвЂ™ve become in 50 years, we need to take a closer look at the psychological effects of current and future technologies. Indeed, some critics claim that technology has not just entered our private lives but started to define them. Children are growing up with interactive toy animals that respond to them like real pets. On the Internet, people invent imaginary identities in virtual chat rooms, playing out the lives they wish they really lived. Technology is not only ubiquitous but has become highly intrusive as well.

Yes, we all spent a lot of time with it, but even five years ago, few people would seriously claim that technology had taken over their lives. For most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place.

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