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Summary: Lots on Bots
Review: This book isn't for the newbie, but if you're already familiar with computers and what's possible on the Internet but haven't yet explored the world of MUDS and the like, this is one of the most informative and fascinating looks at the virtual world that you'll come across. Even more interesting are the questions that Turkle poses regarding self-identity and what the "self" is given the new "non"-environment we call cyberspace. Though offering few answers, the author introduces us to a future world of seemingly infinite possibilities for self-exploration and challenges us to ponder its implications for who we are, how we define ourselves, and how we interact with one another.
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Summary: An important anthropology of virtual life.
Review: This is a crucial read for those who are interested in the intersections of postmodern thinking about human subjectivity, the anthropology of the online world(s), and modern psychological understandings of identity and the human mind. Turkle is balanced and insightful, humble and well-read, and provides a welcome space for the reader to come to her own insights and epiphanies. The best book I've read in several years.
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Summary: A must read for anyone!
Review: This text is quite outstanding. Turkle has produced an amazing integration of technology and sociology in this work. Using ethnography, Turkle distinquishes herself from many popular writers with her emphasis on listening to people explain how *they* make sense out of the net. Works such as this which are so careful in their claims and humanistic in scope are quite difficult to find. Snap up this text in softover, and learn about the ways in which we, in the electronic age, may be seen to live on, and through, the screen,
David J. Paterno
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent... A Very Eclectic and Intelligent Book
Review: Turkel's book combines the best of her research in psychoanalysis, computer technology, and sociology. A readable and thought-provoking work for academics and general public. Timely subject-matter, with a po-mo focus that will make it interesting even in a few years when the technological references will be dated. Somewhat over-emphasizing the Usenet and MUD elements of Internet, with less on the World Wide Web. Highly recommended for those interested in exploring philosophical questions related to "being" in the computer age
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Summary: A Disquietingly Personal Book...More than I Expected
Review: Turkle does a magnificant job in illustrating the human persona while online. As our culture becomes more and more internet dependent, and it becomes easier to be a "globalized" person, psychological changes are sure to take effect. "Life On the Screen" is illustrated with some wry humor, as well as vivid examples. Sometimes doing someonething online makes it seem less "real." For instance, carding something-aka using a fake credit card number-is less 'real' if you do it online, to order something, than it is to waltz into say, BestBuy and using a fake credit card there. Just because you do it in a non-physical area (what is Cyberspace made up of, anyway?) does not mean that it is still not a crime, and that it is still not capable of having reprecussions. Shirley Turkle captures precisely what someone, as a user and interacter with the internet, thinks, and does while online. She acknowledges the existance of the internet being a place where people are able to forge "cyber-identities"...or get more comfortable being who they are. She also outlines something that is perhaps one of the most secure things about the internet in this day and age-that on the internet, you are anonymous. Therefore, you can do what you wish (good or bad) and you can interact with others via MUDs or the like...or you can decide exactly how people will think of you as. The internet is a secure medium for an insecure person. It is where many people who feel unaccepted in life go as refuge, to seek friends and partners who are like them, and who understand. This is also recognized in this book. I highly recommend anyone, either the hacker, or the suit, or the working mother, or the teenager, to pick up this book and just to start reading. It is disturbing, almost, to find that there are so many people who interact with the internet, and so many different things that they do. The globalization that comes along with the net provokes you to start rethinking many things, and questioning many others....The internet, as portrayed in this book, also helps the reader to truly examine themselves as a whole.
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Summary: The continuation of a fallacy.
Review: Turkle's book is a good read, but can not be taken as authorative. She seems to have fallen into the same trap as most of the online researchers do. Turkle expresses her findings as though they come from a similar group of online people. The Internet is filled with various groups and ideologies. Cross-cultural comparison is fine, but considering everyone online as the starting point for an argument is just asking for disaster. It is because of this that Sherry and many others like her have written books that are good for a read but useless academically.
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Summary: Relevant & Important
Review: Turkle's research findings are mind-boggling, exciting, terrifying, and (whether we like what we see or not) revealing. We see, here, glimpses of the future as a place where the real and virtual collide. Where who we are and how we think will differ markedly from all we've taken for granted in the old familiar pre-Info-Age. Anyone who works with children or adolescents of the Info-Age should read this book! I recommend it, along with the more up-to-date work by Don Tapscott.
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Summary: Very interesting anecdotes, but no thesis
Review: Turkle's thesis seems to be that cyberspace encourages us to explore new identities--not very controversial. However, she does provide a lot of interesting stories about life on the internet and the book is very well-written. I use her Introduction to start off my class in technology and it generates a lot of discussion.
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Summary: Powerfully explores the social/psychological life of MUDs.
Review: Turkle's work is without parallel. She is a sociologist working at the famous MIT information laboratories. From her vantage point, she has observed children learning the mechanics of programming robots to interfacing with knowledge bases. In this book she explores the dark and light side of multi-user domains (MUDs), and why individuals chose to live out alternative realities within the privacy of Internet chat rooms. This is discussion is the most powerful aspect of the book, and offers readers many anecdotes from Turkle's years of lecturing and researching the complexities of the human personality. Her essay explores the gender driven soft and hard side of programming, the world of children learning to navigate the personality of the computer, and the theological implictions of life on the internet: the search for God and meaning in alternative realities. As uncomfortable as discovery can sometimes be, we learn that we are much like the characters populating her study: we all have multiple personnae seeking to make sense of our lives
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