Alone Together by Sherry Turkle Read Free Book Online Page A

continues, Sven reconsiders. Perhaps the Furby can live without its skin, “but it will be cold.” He doesn’t back completely away from the biological (the Furby is sensitive to the cold) but reconstructs it. For Sven, the biological now includes creatures such as Furbies, whose “insides” stay “all in the same place” when their skin is removed. This accommodation calms him down. If a Furby is simultaneously biological and mechanical, the operation in process, which is certainly removing the Furby’s skin, is not necessarily destructive. Children make theories when they are confused or anxious. A good theory can reduce anxiety.
    But some children become more anxious as the operation continues. One suggests that if the Furby dies, it might haunt them. It is alive enough to turn into a ghost. Indeed, a group of children start to call the empty Furby skin “the ghost of Furby” and the Furby’s naked body “the goblin.” They are not happy that this operation might leave a Furby goblin and ghost at large. One girl comes up with the idea that the ghost of the Furby will be less fearful if distributed. She asks if it would be okay “if every child took home a piece of Furby skin.” She is told this would be fine, but, unappeased, she asks the same question two more times. In the end, most children leave with a bit of Furby fur. 8 Some talk about burying it when they get home. They leave room for a private ritual to placate the goblin and say good-bye.
    Inside the classroom, most of the children feel they are doing the best they can with a sick pet. But from outside the classroom, the Furby surgery looks alarming. Children passing by call out, “You killed him.” “How dare you kill Furby?” “You’ll go to Furby jail.” Denise, eight, watches some of the goings-on from the safety of the hall. She has a Furby at home and says that she does not like to talk about its problems as diseases because “Furbies are not animals.” She uses the word “fake” to mean nonbiological and says, “Furbies are fake, and they don’t get diseases.” But later, she reconsiders her position when her own Furby’s batteries run out and the robot, so chatty only moments before, becomes inert. Denise panics: “It’s dead. It’s dead right now.... Its eyes are closed.” She then declares her Furby “both fake and dead.” Denise concludes that worn-out batteries and water can kill a Furby. It is a mechanism, but alive enough to die.
    Linda, six, is one of the children whose family has volunteered to keep a Furby for a two-week home study. She looked forward to speaking to her Furby, sure that unlike her other dolls, this robot would be worth talking to. But on its very first night at her home, her Furby stops working: “Yeah, I got used to it, and then it broke that night—the night that I got it. I felt like I was broken or something.... I cried a lot. . . . I was really sad that it broke, ’cause Furbies talk, they’re like real, they’re like real people.” Linda is so upset about not protecting her Furby that when it breaks she feels herself broken.
    Things get more complicated when I give Linda a new Furby. Unlike children like Zach who have invested time and love in a “first Furby” and want no replacements, Linda had her original Furby in working condition for only a few hours. She likes having Furby #2: “It plays hide-and-seek with me. I play red light, green light, just like in the manual.” Linda feeds it and makes sure it gets enough rest, and she reports that her new Furby is grateful and affectionate. She makes this compatible with her assessment of a Furby as “just a toy” because she has come to see gratitude, conversation, and affection as something that toys can manage. But now she will not name her Furby or say it is alive. There would be risk in that: Linda might feel guilty if the new Furby were alive enough to die and she had a replay of her painful first experience.
    Like the child