Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She is a specialist in how technology changes us psychologically and socially. Her new book is on our relationships with chatbots —Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. It will be published by Little, Brown and Company on September 29, 2026. It captures the seductive, beguiling nature of our new faux companions, tracing their effects throughout a human life—from childhood to parenthood, from work to love and more. She warns that these machines are quietly reshaping us - teaching us to avoid risk, sidestep difficult conversations, deny grief, and relinquish skills that make us human: empathy, resilience, the ability to navigate uncertainty.
Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist. Professor Turkle writes on the “subjective side” of people’s relationships with technology, especially computers. She is an expert on culture and therapy, mobile technology, social networking, sociable robotics, and generative AI.
Before Artificial Intimacy, Turkle wrote the New York Times bestseller, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press, October 2015) that investigated how a technology- driven flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity. She followed that with an award winning memoir, The Empathy Diaries (Penguin Press, March 2021) that ties together her personal story with her groundbreaking research on technology, empathy, and ethics.
Previous works include four other books about evolving relationships in digital culture: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit; Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet; Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other; and Simulation and Its Discontents. Turkle's book about the history of psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution, was reissued in 2024. Turkle has also edited several collections on how we use objects to think with, particularly in the development of ideas about science. These include Evocative Objects: Things We Think With; Falling for Science: Objects in Mind; and The Inner History of Devices.