Book

Simulation and Its Discontents

Jan 2009 🇺🇸 MIT Press

In this 2009 book, Sherry Turkle looks at how computer simulation changed scientific and engineering training and practice, drawing on interviews with architects, engineers, and scientists who increasingly work through simulated models rather than physical prototypes. She raises a concern that heavy reliance on simulation can be associated with a weaker feel for the underlying physical reality a model represents, describing students who trust a simulation's output without fully grasping why. The book is a professional and academic study rather than a work aimed at parents, but its core theme — that simulated experience is not a full substitute for direct, physical engagement — runs through Turkle's later, more general arguments about screens and childhood. TechKids Foundation includes it as scholarly context for that broader argument.

CITATION

Turkle, Sherry. Simulation and Its Discontents. MIT Press, 2009.

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