If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

Technology doesn't just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.

Telephone companies sell us voice plans because they know we're not going to use them. We're hiding from each other. People say that calls aren't efficient, but trying to bring efficiency into your intimacy can get you into a lot of trouble.

We will continue to live in a form in which we become cyborg. Either we download our information to a machine or we incorporate so many machine parts that we don't know where we end and the machine begins.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

If you're happy with where the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter have taken you, I'm not the Grinch. Someone called me Sherry Turkle's "evil Luddite twin." I'm not that. I enjoy the bounties of this technology. But if you fear that your connected life is running away with you, read the book, reflect, talk to your family and friends. I think we deserve better than some of the places that we've gotten with this technology.