Maha, are people disconnected from responsiveness through exposure to the “all – audiences” neutrality of mass learning? We talk about self-actualization as a necessary and heroic skill but we lose the our ability to initiate or manage human contact. Sherry Turkle talks about this in “Alone Together” but my question is more something Bonnie Stewart might be able to answer: We need to be independent and in a sense unaffiliated with particular loyalties in a time of change. To be nimble and adaptive requires a certain self-confidence that isn’t easily collapsed by disagreement and disapproval.

Yet still, we need to be connected, networked and woven into the human, Together – Together I guess. And it needs to be more that just “knowing” a lot of people. Maybe it’s knowing about people? But how do we know about people when we exist as solitary beings at the end of an internet connection where so many subtle cues are not present?

A paradox to add my confusion here from “Building Out Into the Dark: theory and observation in science and Psychoanalysis” by Robert Caper: “Psychoanalysis does not aim to change, modify or improve who patients are, nor even tell them who they are; it only gets them into a position to find out for themselves.” I we are the source of knowledge of our true selves why do we need other people? Why do we connect to attain completeness, or do we?

ALONE TOGETHER By Sherry Turkle
Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Lehrer-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0