Diatrope Blog

Book Review: Amy Ione reviews The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle

The PDF is now available for The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle.

(Reviewed by Amy Ione, Published in Leonardo, Volume 54, Number 5, 2021, pp. 583-586 (Article). Leonardo is published by The MIT Press).

Book coverBook review summary:
Sherry Turkle’s exemplary research on technology as it relates to humans, personal relationships and children has provided key insights as the computer has ingrained itself in our world. While her early chronicles on innovative technologies were impres­sive, I felt that the more important contributions were her insights chal­lenging the unbridled enthusiasm of innovative technologists and how technology often compromised privacy.

This memoir-primarily devoted to the period from her child­hood through her tenure appoint­ment years (1948-1985) presents more details related to the person behind early works like The Second Self than the researcher who later penned Life on the Screen and Alone Together. That said, the book does cogently capture how Turkle came to the interdisciplinary framework that has often set her apart.

Read the full review here

The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle. Penguin Press. 2021. 384 pp., illus. Hardcover. ISBN-10: 0-525560092; ISBN-13: 978-0525560098.

Shop the global, independent bookstore marketplace this holiday season rather than the big box retail online stores like Amazon!

Booksale ImageIf you are buying books or collectibles this holiday season, the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA), founded in 1999, is a good place to start. With over 350 members from 18 countries, this trade association offers high-quality stock and maintains professional bookselling standards. Each store is unique, and their inventories range from more recent used books to hard-to-find out-of-print books,  antiquarian books, maps, and collectibles. Since the items are sourced from throughout the world, it is the perfect place to find a special gift.

Because IOBA  sellers are also both online and independent, these small businesses are an ideal first stop on both Indie Day—Saturday, November 27th
and Cyber-Monday–November 29th.

Diatrope Books is an IOBA member.  Please visit our inventory at diatropebooks.com.

Click here to search the inventory of IOBA’s booksellers

Click here to search by name or location

 

Ann: NanoArt International Festival call for art

NanoArt 21 and The Academy of NanoArt cordially invite you to exhibit at the 6th International Festival of NanoArt hosted at Hotel Eden Roc in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain, on September 24 – 30, 2021, about 100Km North of Barcelona.

ICPAM-13 is intended to be a forum of physicists, chemists, material scientists and engineers for the discussion and exchange of ideas and results, in fundamental and applied research in advanced materials.

The Art-Science–Technology session of the conference is intended to communicate the advancements concerning art-science-technology intersections to scientists and artists who would like to embrace this area of research.

The International Festival of NanoArt, artworks authored by international artists and scientists will be exhibited in Goya Hall at Hotel Eden Roc in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain.

If you wish to make a presentation please submit the abstract to https://www2.phys.uaic.ro/icpam13/instructions_l2_p1.html (deadline August 12, 2021).

If you would like to exhibit your NanoArt works at the Festival please visit https://nanoart21.org/international-festival-of-nanoart/(deadline July 31, 2021).

New Book Reviews now online

PDFs for Amy Ione’s Reviews of Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life and From Melies to New Media: Spectral Projection now online.

From Melies to New Media: Spectral Projections by Wendy Haslem. Intellect Press, Bristol, U.K., 2019. 201 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 978-1783209897. (Reviewed by Amy Ione, Leonardo, Vol. 54, No. 3. PDF

Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life by Phillip Thurtle. University of Minnesota Press, Posthurnanities Volume 46, Minneapolis, MN, 2018. ISBN: 978-1517902773; ISBN: 1517902770. (Reviewed by Amy Ione, Leonardo, Volume 53, Number 3, 2020, pp. 343-346) PDF

The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle (Reviewed by Amy Ione)

The Empathy Diaries: A MemoirSherry Turkle’s exemplary research on technology as it relates to humans, personal relationships, and children has provided key insights as the computer has ingrained itself in our world. While her early chronicles on innovative technologies were impressive, I felt that the more important contributions were her insights challenging the unbridled enthusiasm of innovative technologists and how technology often compromised privacy. This memoir—primarily devoted to her childhood. through tenure appointment years (1948-1985) — presents more details related to the person behind early works like The Second Self than the researcher who later pennedLife on the Screen,and Alone Together[1]. That said, the book does cogently capture how Turkle came to the interdisciplinary framework that has often set her apart. Or, as she puts it, “I found my life’s work by navigating as a bricoleur, trying one thing and stepping back, making new connections, and most of all, by listening” (p. 241).

 

The volume is divided into three parts. The first part introduces her from childhood to her early college experience (1948-1968). We discover that while she felt a part of her family as she grew up, she simultaneously developed the sense (and the clarity) of an outsider. Some of this came about because her mother believed that any “reality” could be claimed as real. Turkle therefore had to decipher how her mother was interpreting reality because her mother’s “facts” didn’t always conform with the world Turkle experienced.

By contrast, her biological father’s love of science made it easy for him to lose touch with the human needs of his family. Then, once her parents divorced, her mother’s second marriage created identity problems because her mother wanted Turkle to use her second husband’s last name even before she was legally adopted. The upshot of this was that Turkle grew up with two deep convictions: On the one hand, she felt something was wrong with her because of her name. In addition, she understood that four loving adults— her grandparents, her mother, and her Aunt Mildred— had made her the center of their lives. We also learn she was an exceptional student and intent on going to Radcliffe.

“I was focused on finally leaving home. But I had tried to take what I most admired: my aunt’s intelligence and integrity; my grandmother’s empathy and resourcefulness; my grandfather’s tenacity. As for my mother, I wanted her capacity for joy in small things, the energy she brought to every moment.” (p. 77)

  Continue reading “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle (Reviewed by Amy Ione)”

Book Review: From Méliès to New Media: Spectral Projections

Reviewed by Amy Ione, August 2020
Leonardo Reviews, https://www.leonardo.info/review/2020/08/from-melies-to-new-media-spectral-projections

From Méliès to New Media: Spectral Projections is an exploration of the presence and importance of film history in contemporary digital culture. Using a media archaeology approach, the author, Wendy Haslem, aims to demonstrate that innovative new media forms are not only indebted to, but firmly embedded within the traditions and conventions of early film culture. Throughout the book Haslem presents an array of projects that deftly move through topics, like indexicality, semiotics, memory, and digital restoration to light, materiality/immateriality, creative experimentation, time and obsolescence. While the overall goal is to introduce a new language of cinema and an alternative approach to historiography, the net result is a good start but falls short. The study is strongest and most original when presenting contemporary projects and examples of spectacle. Haslem tells us:

“Many of the films that I explore in this book favour spectacle over realism, some prioritize non-linear, experimental narration over linear, classical narrative form. Many of the older (and some of the newer) films exhibit surfaces etched with markers of time, and as such, they provide a rich surface aesthetic to encounter and explore. My approach to writing on film has always been to try to explore the surface of the film itself. That means prioritizing the aesthetic, looking for moments where details of the spectacle reveal history. My tendency is to zoom into surface details, focusing on the traces of celluloid that remain present within a digital ecology. Material detail, surface, aesthetic and mise-en-scéne drive my film analysis. This is also an approach that prioritizes the senses. (p. 28)

Continue reading “Book Review: From Méliès to New Media: Spectral Projections”

ChildArt July-September 2020 issue now online

The current issue of ChildArt is now online. This issue is published in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Institutes of Health, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. You can find it at https://icaf.org/childart/ChildArt_ArtforHealth_July-Sept2020.pdf

Published by the  International Child Art Foundation (ICAF), this group also  produces the World Children’s Festival, which is postponed this year due to Covid-19. It will now take place on July 30th–August 1st, 2021 at The National Mall across from the U.S. Capitol.

As Ashfaq Ishaq, the Founder and Chair of ICAF, points out in the forward to this issue:

“While we rely on science to free us from Covid-19, art opens windows to new vistas and can serve as a mirror for self-improvement.”

Lecture: Working Across Disciplines: Figuring Out How to Figure it Out Together

Working Across Disciplines: Figuring Out How to Figure it Out Together with Tedi Asher and Trevor Smith
Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 1:00pm to 2:00pm

Trevor Smith, Curator of the Present Tense, and Tedi Asher, Neuroscience Researcher, will share their own collaborative experiences at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) to reflect on reciprocity between the arts and sciences in a museum context, processes relevant to cultivating connections (institutionally and interpersonally) between these fields, and the role that field-specific content (e.g. artwork, data), and our experience of that content, can play in mediating such connections and reciprocal exchange.

Register: https://theopenscholar.com/event/tedi-asher-and-trevor-smith

Leonardo Reviews Posted July 2020

Leonardo Reviews is pleased to announce this month’s reviews posting.

Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity
by Melanie Schiller
Reviewed by Beate Peter

Planet of the Humans
by Jeff Gibbs, Director; Michael Moore, Executive Producer
Reviewed by George Gessert

History of Stereoscopic Photography: Virtual 3D-Con 2020

Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography at the Virtual 3D-Con 2020, the National Stereoscopic Society

August 14, 2020, 7:30-11:30 a.m., Pacific Time

Free to the Public

Register here:  http://www.3d-con.com/registration.php