Author Guide · Technology & Psychology
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In 1976 Sherry Turkle, a newly qualified Harvard sociologist trained in psychoanalysis, joined the faculty of MIT, surrounded by engineers building the first personal computers. Instead of asking what the machines could do, she asked the people using them what the machines were doing to them. Fifty years of interviews with children, students, programmers and older people in care homes followed. In April 1996 she was on the cover of Wired; by 2012 her TED talk was warning that we were letting technology “take us places that we don’t want to go”. Her newest book, published in September 2026, turns to chatbots sold as friends and therapists. This guide covers her eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1978–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Sherry Turkle has written eight books as sole author, from Psychoanalytic Politics (1978) to Artificial Intimacy (2026), and edited three more. The best known are The Second Self (1984), Life on the Screen (1995), Alone Together (2011) and Reclaiming Conversation (2015). Start with Alone Together, the book that sums up her research on robots and networked life, then read on for how her view of technology changed over four decades.
Where to Start with Sherry Turkle
If you want her defining book
→ Alone Together (2011) — robots, texting and the cost of always being connected.
If you want practical arguments about phones and talk
→ Reclaiming Conversation (2015) — family dinners, classrooms and offices.
If you want her story
→ The Empathy Diaries (2021) — the memoir of a Brooklyn childhood built on a family secret.
If you want her view on AI companions
→ Artificial Intimacy (2026) — her 2026 book on chatbots as friends and therapists.
8 Sherry Turkle Books, in Order
Psychoanalytic Politics
Her first book, based on her time in France after the uprising of May–June 1968. It traces how the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan took hold in French culture and politics in those years, and how its ideas became what she calls “objects to think with”, a phrase that runs through all her later work.
The Second Self
A study of how the personal computer, then new in homes and schools, changed the way people learn and think about themselves. Turkle interviewed children, students and programmers about their one-on-one relationship with the machine. It became the first book of a trilogy completed by Life on the Screen and Alone Together.
Life on the Screen
Written as the internet reached ordinary homes, it follows people in MUDs, text-based online worlds where users ran several characters and handles at once. Turkle argues that online life made the idea of a multiple, decentralised self feel concrete. It is the most hopeful of her books about technology, and the year after it came out she was on the cover of Wired.
Simulation and Its Discontents
A short book from MIT Press on how simulation and visualisation changed scientific and design work over twenty years, through case studies in space exploration, oceanography, architecture and biology. It weighs what simulation gives architects and scientists against what it costs, including a divide between generations over hands-on, tacit knowledge.
Alone Together
The book in two parts. “The Robotic Moment” looks at how children and older people bond with Tamagotchis, Furbies, AIBO and care robots; “Networked” looks at texting, social media and online worlds such as Second Life. Turkle concludes that we accept machines as company while letting human relationships thin out. It became a New York Times bestseller, and its argument is the subject of her 2012 TED talk.
Reclaiming Conversation
Built around the three chairs in Thoreau’s cabin at Walden, “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society”, it moves from time alone to friends and family, then to classrooms and workplaces where people text instead of talking, and ends with our conversations with machines such as Siri. Turkle has called the book “not anti-technology” but “pro-conversation”.
The Empathy Diaries
Her memoir of a working-class Jewish childhood in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment shared with her mother, grandparents and aunt. At home she was Sherry Turkle, after her stepfather Milton; at school she was Sherry Zimmerman, and her father’s name could not be spoken. At 27 she found her father, Charles Zimmerman, through a private detective. The book follows her on to Paris, Harvard and MIT.
Artificial Intimacy
Published by Little, Brown in September 2026, it looks at AI chatbots marketed as friends, lovers and therapists. Turkle argues that they offer a performance of empathy, and that accepting the performance as enough weakens our capacity for risk, difficult conversations and independent judgement. She follows the habit across a lifetime, from children’s first attachments to how people face death.
In What Order to Read Sherry Turkle
The books do not continue from one another, but publication order shows her argument changing. The Second Self, Life on the Screen and Alone Together were conceived as a trilogy, and read together they move from curiosity in 1984 to optimism in 1995 to alarm in 2011. Reclaiming Conversation and Artificial Intimacy follow from Alone Together.
If you want only one, read Alone Together. Read The Empathy Diaries after at least one of the technology books: it explains where her interest in what people hide, and in what objects mean to them, came from. Psychoanalytic Politics and Simulation and Its Discontents are the most academic, for readers who already know her work.
A reading path
1. Alone Together (2011)
2. Reclaiming Conversation (2015)
3. Life on the Screen (1995)
4. The Empathy Diaries (2021)
5. Artificial Intimacy (2026)
Everything Else Sherry Turkle Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited collections
3
3 books · 2007–2008
- 2007Evocative Objects: Things We Think Withessays by different writers, each on one object in their life
- 2008Falling for Science: Objects in Mindscientists and students on the objects that drew them to science
- 2008The Inner History of Devicesessays on the inner life people build with their technologies
The years · 1948–2026
Quick facts about Sherry Turkle
- Known for
- She is known for studying, over five decades at MIT, how computers, robots and phones change the way people think about themselves and each other.
- 1948
- Born in Brooklyn, New York
- 1976
- Joins the MIT faculty
- 2011
- Alone Together
- Born
- 18 June 1948, Brooklyn, New York
- Education
- Radcliffe College (BA, 1969); Harvard, joint PhD in sociology and personality psychology (1976)
- Position
- Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, MIT
- Founded
- The MIT Initiative on Technology and Self
- Also
- A licensed clinical psychologist
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, Harvard Centennial Medal; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Married
- Seymour Papert (1977–1985), Ralph Willard (1987–1998)
The red mark is 2011: Alone Together, the book that closed her trilogy on computers and the self.
How Sherry Turkle Writes: Listening to People and Their Machines
Turkle works as an ethnographer and a clinician. Her books are built from long interviews and observation: children playing with Furbies, students texting through class, older people talking to care robots. She quotes them at length and lets their words carry the argument, then reads them as a psychoanalyst would, asking what an attachment to a machine says about what a person needs.
Her central idea, taken from her first book, is the “object to think with”: things, from Lacan’s theories to a personal computer, that people use to think about themselves. That is why her subject is never the technology itself but the people around it, and why the same method produced the optimism of Life on the Screen and the warnings of Alone Together.
From Alone Together on, she writes more directly for general readers, with chapters that move between case studies and plain recommendations, such as device-free spaces for conversation. Critics have called this stance nostalgic; she has answered that her work is “not anti-technology” but “pro-conversation”. The Empathy Diaries uses the same close attention on her own family.
Watch
Connected, but alone?
At TED2012 Turkle asks whether, as we expect more from technology, we expect less from each other — the argument of Alone Together.
Frequently asked questions about Sherry Turkle’s books
How many books has Sherry Turkle written?
Eight as sole author, from Psychoanalytic Politics (1978) to Artificial Intimacy (2026). She has also edited three collections: Evocative Objects (2007), Falling for Science (2008) and The Inner History of Devices (2008).
What are Sherry Turkle’s books in order?
Psychoanalytic Politics (1978), The Second Self (1984), Life on the Screen (1995), Simulation and Its Discontents (2009), Alone Together (2011), Reclaiming Conversation (2015), The Empathy Diaries (2021) and Artificial Intimacy (2026).
Where should I start with Sherry Turkle?
With Alone Together (2011). It brings together her research on robots and on networked life, and the later books build on it. If you want something more practical about phones and everyday talk, start with Reclaiming Conversation (2015).
What is Sherry Turkle’s most famous book?
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011), a New York Times bestseller. Her 2012 TED talk based on it, “Connected, but alone?”, has been played more than eight million times on TED.com.
What is Sherry Turkle’s trilogy?
The Second Self (1984), Life on the Screen (1995) and Alone Together (2011) are often described as a trilogy on computers and the self. Read in order, they show her view moving from curiosity to optimism to concern.
Is Sherry Turkle against technology?
She says not: she has described Reclaiming Conversation as “not anti-technology” but “pro-conversation”, and in her TED talk said she is “still excited by technology”. Her views are debated. Some reviewers, for example in Boston Review, argue she sets screen-based talk against face-to-face talk too sharply; a review of Alone Together in American Scientist noted that many of her interviewees were heavy users of their devices.
What is The Empathy Diaries about?
Her own childhood in Brooklyn, in a family that kept her father’s identity secret. She used her stepfather’s name, Turkle, at home and her father’s, Zimmerman, at school, and only found her father, Charles Zimmerman, at 27. The memoir connects that secrecy to her later work on what people reveal and hide.
What is Artificial Intimacy about?
Her 2026 book looks at AI chatbots presented as friends, partners and therapists. She argues that they perform empathy rather than feel it, and that relying on them weakens our tolerance for the risk and effort of real relationships.
Is Sherry Turkle a psychologist?
Yes. She holds a joint Harvard doctorate in sociology and personality psychology and is a licensed clinical psychologist. She teaches at MIT, where she founded the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.
Is Sherry Turkle still alive?
Yes. She was born on 18 June 1948 in Brooklyn, New York, and published Artificial Intimacy in September 2026.
Footnotes
- Sherry Turkle — Wikipedia
- Artificial Intimacy — Hachette Book Group
- Connected, but alone? — TED
- In ‘The Empathy Diaries,’ Sherry Turkle considers the burden of family secrets — NPR, 2021
- Alone Together, reviewed — American Scientist, 2011
- Simulation and Its Discontents — MIT STS Program
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”
— Sherry Turkle, “Connected, but alone?”, TED talk (2012)
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