she says. “We are lonely but fearful of
intimacy. Constant connectivity offers
the illusion of companionship with-
out the demands of friendship. We
can’t get enough of each other if we can
have each other at a distance and in
amounts that we can control.”
The heavy use of digital technology
trains society to have less patience for
the particular skills, pace, and sensi-
tivities of face-to-face interaction. “We
become used to the volume and veloc-
ity of the digital medium,” explains
Turkle. “We adapt to it and, over time,
become more comfortable with its
simplifications.” The upshot? “People
complain that they are too busy com-
municating to think, too busy commu-
nicating to create, and, in a final para-
dox, too busy communicating to fully
connect with the people who matter.
We are in continual contact but we are
alone together.”
The ripples of digital technology
also make it easier to hide. Turkle says
many people admit they are relieved to
leave a voicemail message rather than
reach the intended person. Some say
that texting lets them avoid the time
commitment of phone calls. “We are
using technologies to dial down hu-
man contact,” she says. “People are
comforted by being in touch with a lot
of people whom they also keep at bay.”
The result? “We imagine that email
and texting will give us more control
over our time and emotional exposure”
but, eventually, “anything but staccato
texts seems too exhausting.”

While digital
technology can
connect families
and friends over
geographic distances,
it is critical to
recognize that
facebook pokes
and postings
aren’t equal to
actual conversation.

master or slave?

The allure of digital technology im-
pacts people in other ways. Suman
says the students he teaches have
more trouble than ever focusing on
lectures and learning. Text messages
and emails arrive in gibberish, he
says, and students end up asking the
same questions over and over. Even
when they have switched off their
devices they are too often unable to
think through concepts and ideas.
“They’re increasingly challenged
to engage in deep and meaningful
thought,” he says. “Sequential, logi-
cal, rational thinking seems to be se-
verely compromised.”
A breakdown of social etiquette—
if not outright rudeness—is also more
pervasive, Nass says. “Today, people
think it’s okay to text in the middle of
dinner, at a meeting, in class, wher-
ever. They text while you’re talking to
them and then they look up and say,
‘What?’ ” Humans, he says, aren’t
good at multitasking. In fact, studies
show that multitasking doesn’t exist.
We simply switch back and forth from
one task to another very quickly. The
heaviest “multitaskers” show signs
of diminished short-term memory. In
other words, they’re forgetful.

Society

Gender Bias at Wikipedia?

A substantial gap in the number of male versus female editors at Wikipedia may be creating a gender-oriented disparity in the popular online information source’s content, according to research by the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering.

only 16% of the new editors who joined Wikipedia in 2009 identified themselves as female and those females made only 9% of the edits by the editors who joined that year.

The findings of Minnesota’s
GroupLens Research Lab were
recently published in a paper, “WP:
Clubhouse? An Exploration of
Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance,”
and discussed in a You Tube
video, “Research Proves Gender
Imbalance on Wikipedia.”
“We think people who use
Wikipedia as a resource need
to be aware our results suggest
there are disparities in the
quality of its content coverage
and those disparities seem to be
related to the gender gap,” says
lead researcher Shyong (Tony)
K. Lam. “For example, we found
Wikipedia’s coverage of movies
of particular interest to females
tends to be lower in quality than
its coverage of movies with large
male audiences.”
The research gives no
indication as to why the gender
gap exists. “our research was
entirely quantitative and based
on data made publicly available
by Wikipedia,” Lam adds.