paper homework

Vocabulary “Alone Together: The Robotic Moment?” by Sherry Turkle

Listen to each word and read each definition. For each word and definition, write the part of speech.

1. symptom (     )  — a change which shows that something bad exists : a sign of something bad — often + of

2. companionate   (      )    — having the qualities of a person you spend time with or enjoy being with. Often romantic.

3. complexity   (    )  — the quality or state of not being simple : the quality or state of being complex

4. tenuous   (     )  — very weak or slight

5. simulation   (      )  — something that is made to look, feel, or behave like something else

6. complicity   (      )  — the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing

7. Idiom: deus ex machina— (literal translation: god from the machine) an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation

Fill in useful parts of speech for each vocabulary term.

*these forms are not commonly used

The sentences below are quotations from the text. Read each sentence and paraphrase it. Make sure that you put each vocabulary item (in bold) into your own words.

1.     “People seem comforted by the belief that if we alienate or fail each other, robots will be there, programmed to provide simulations of love” (P20).

2.     “The elderly are the first to have companionate robots aggressively marketed to them, but young people also see the merits of robotic companionship” (P21).

3.     “Sociable robots serve as both symptom and dream: as a symptom, they promise a way to sidestep conflicts about intimacy; as a dream, they express a wish for relationships with limits, a way to be both together and alone” (P22).

4.     “These days, teenagers have sexual adulthood thrust upon them before they are ready to deal with the complexities of relationships” (P21).

5.     “After an evening of avatar-to avatar talk in a networked game, we feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life and, in the next, curiously isolated, in tenuous complicity with strangers” (P24).