Book

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

Jan 1984 🇺🇸 Simon & Schuster

Published in 1984, this early book by MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle is based on interviews with children, hobbyists, and early programmers encountering personal computers for the first time. Turkle argued that computers were not neutral tools but 'objects to think with' — machines people used to work out questions about identity, control, and what separates a mind from a mechanism. She described children forming strong attachments to computers and debating, in their own terms, whether a machine that plays chess or talks back could be considered alive. The book is a foundational text in Turkle's long-running study of how people's emotional relationships with technology shape self-understanding. TechKids Foundation includes it as background on the decades-long history behind current debates about children, screens, and machines, not as evidence about clinical outcomes.

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CITATION

Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. Simon & Schuster, 1984.

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