Sherry Turkle

Interview

• "Computer language discriminates against women" (Boston, 29/04/1999 )

Biography

Once called 'the anthropologist of cyberspace' Sherry Turkle is considered an 'emerging guru of digital thought'. Born in New York, she studied at Radcliffe College and with the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In 1976 she was awarded a doctorate in 'Sociology and psychology of the personality' at Harvard University with a thesis entitled 'Psychoanalysis and Society: The Emergence of French Freud'. A clinical psychologist, she is a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and consultant in psychology to the Department of Mental Health of Harvard University. She currently teaches the Sociology of Science at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). She has taught courses in 'Identity and the Internet' (1996), 'Gender, Technology and Computer Culture' (1998) and 'Systems and the Self' (1998). She is currently working on the relationship between children and virtual animals as part of an MIT, research project ().

Prof. Turkle has been a member of numerous academic commissions and is currently on the Harvard University Visiting Committee and the Communication Forum. An expert on gender issues she is also a member of the Women Studies Steering Committe, and the Massachusetts Women's Forum and is co-president of the Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education of the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. She has received a wide variety of academic and non-academic awards, including the Peter Livingston Award for Research in the Behavioral Sciences and Psychiatry (1975), the Matrix Award of the Association for Women in Communications (1985) and the Melcher Book Award from the Cambridge Forum for her book The Second Self. She was nominated 'Woman of the Year' by Ms Magazine (1984), among the '50 for the Future: the Most Influential People to Watch in Cyberspace' by Newsweek Magazine (1995), one of the 'Top 50 Cyber Elite' by Time Digital Magazine (1997), and one of 'Boston's Top Wired Women' by Boston Webgirls. She is on the Board of Incorporators of 'Harvard Magazine' and the Editorial Advisory Board of Science, Technology, and Human Values .