Categories: Articles

The Other Side Of Our Digital Selves

You need to wrestle (deeply) with what you are about to see.

Since I attended this past year’s TED conference, I can’t get the dinner conversation I had with Sherry Turkle out of my mind. With each passing day, as I get further and further involved in technology and digital media (especially because I am neck-deep in writing my second book, CTRL ALT DEL), I straddle between marveling at this amazing new world and how it has changed business forever, while at the same time, seeing so many people use technology in a way that is (without question) enslaving them. Turkle is a professor at MIT and the author of the fascinating book, Alone Together – Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. It’s the kind of book that I caution new media thinkers about reading, because it can be as depressing as it is enlightening when you begin to deeply think about our lives and our digital selves.

Digital makes life better.

That was always my assumption. Technology is awesome and it’s hard not to marvel at the iPhone and the incredible computational power we have in the palm of our hands (and how it connects us all). Turkle suggests another perspective: do we really think that digital will help us lead better lives in our protein forms? Shortly after attending the TED conference and discussing these topics with Turkle (which happened the night before her TED talk), I found myself at a party in Montreal for a new product launch. I got to the event a little early and instead of mingling, I retreated to a couch in the corner and the safety of my iPhone. There was nothing pressing in terms of emails or tweets for me to tend to, but it was much more like a security blanket than anything else. I took warmth in my connectivity to it and how it shielded me from being social in public (something I’m self-admittedly not all that great/comfortable with). At that moment, I realized that the iPhone was a better companion than a human being. That sounds very tragic. That’s not me or who I am, but that is how I felt. I’m not sure I would have ever realized or acknowledged those feelings had I not met and spent time with Sherry Turkle. As much as I love technology and new media, it’s important to think about the consequences as well.

In this amazing TED Talk, Turkle asks a very important question: "is technology taking us to a place that we do not want to go to?"

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.