QDW

     The title of Dr. Turkle's book and lecture are both representative of the lifestyle of being connected in a virtual sense, but slightly alone in physical interactions. She gives the example of her daughter and her friends hanging out together, but each of them is sitting in a room on their phones doing nothing at all with their time together. This practice of being together while being off in your own world, denying each other of their full attention, and being on their phones is something she stresses importance on throughout her lecture.

She also gave the example of people on their phones during funerals. She claims that "we remove ourselves from our grief and our reverie and go into our phones" as an outlet of comfort or distraction. Her argument is that these occurrences cause problems of being able to relate to one another because people want to have control over where they put their attention.
     I agree with most of the topics Dr. Turkle discussed in her lecture. One quote in specific that she mentions is that "human relationships are rich and messy and demanding; and we clean them up with technology." This excerpt from her lecture insinuates that people are meant to sometimes have imperfect relationships, but people are so dependent on technology and media to make it easier for people to have relationships that aren't fully reality. Our reliance on technology to improve relations with others makes it incredibly harder for us to connect completely in person. Going along with this notion, another issue she expressed was when she said, "we sacrifice conversation for mere connection." This basically meant that we are all striving for a connection but are perpetually losing interest in having intimate conversations that are necessary in order to get to know people. The problematic part of this issue is that people are losing it, but no one seems to care because we are all living in a technologically advanced era where evolution will forever be inevitable. She later goes on to discuss social media as a whole and how it affects our conversations with each other and ourselves. In her lecture she states "that's why it is so appealing to have a Facebook page or a twitter feed with so many automatic listeners." This causes temptation amongst people who feel as if no one is listening to them, so they will expel their feelings to machines in an attempt to strike a conversation. This also goes along with her next comment that "we expect more from technology and less from each other." I agree with this statement because so often, I will go on my twitter feed and see 'subtweets' (which are tweets intended for another specific viewer's attention) perpetually from people who are trying to capture the attention of the person they are referring to but are too scared to talk to about their issue. The problem with this type of conversation is that people aren't actually connecting, but are attempting to fill a void that should actually be filled with physical conversation. This type of content "expresses, but it doesn't solve an underlying problem."
     Dr. Turkle's viewpoint, while seemingly similar in some sense to both Lasn and Baurlin, differs in some aspects. One thing that she says that is different from the other two is that people are not to be blamed for their attention deficiency to one another during conversations, but technology as a whole is to be blamed. Lasn argues that the world is to blame for their overuse of technology, and Baurlin claims that young people are to blame for being plain dumb. I think that opinion wise, Turkle and Lasn have more points that support each other while Baurlin is altogether negative towards a specific group of people. However, all three have a common thesis: that technology plays too big a role in our daily lives. If I had to side with one person's arguments more than the other two, I would side with Turkle.