Remaking ourselves with small electronic devises and hyperconnectivity

Sherry Turkle (MIT) has been studying and writing about technology for decades.  Her most recent book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other. Today I heard her talking about I-phones and I-pads.  The interview sent me to my laptop and internet connection to look up more about her comments on these devises and the changes they are stimulating in our ways of being.  I was struck by the possibility that these are remaking our sense of ourselves in ways that we have not considered as we have focused on the early 20th century.  Turkle, in her most recent work, has begun to explore the losses as well as the possibilities of technology.  These include

1) the loss of solitude, a state of being which depends upon being alone, not connected, not available.

2) the possibility that those small devises in one's hand, manipulated by touch are experienced as an extension of self, a sort of "intimate machine. "

3) the possibility that we avoid real, emotional connection with people when we interact with them only through electronically mediated channels.

All this leaves me wondering about the senses and their role in human life.  And. . . as Christians celebrate the festival of the incarnation, I can not help but reflect that God-with-us was/is not virtual or simulated, but fully human, tangible, sensory, present. 

Then, we must ask ourselves: into what do we want to remake ourselves and our society?  This is not merely a question about political commitments; it is also a question about technology and machines.  The Model-T (and other automobiles made on moving assembly-lines) led to our assumptions about individual transportation, to construction of highways, to long commutes to work from suburbs, and to our dependance upon oil.  (Yes, led to conceals a much longer, more complex chain of causation.) Turkle is far from a Luddite.  She is not anti-technology.  Nonetheless, listening to her I was reminded that Amish provide a model of thoughtfulness about technology that might serve us well even if we are more willing to adopt new machines than they.