The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

To announce their engagement to her family, Turkle invites Papert to meet her grandfather and Aunt Mildred in Brooklyn. She is nervous that they will disapprove of the age gap, but Papert wins over her grandfather by using his skill as a researcher and teacher. He teaches her grandfather to juggle, engaging him in “loud thinking” as he would one of his students, getting him to connect with his memories and body. Turkle’s grandfather is delighted and approves of their union. Despite this, Turkle remains troubled by Papert’s behavior, especially his inability to keep appointments and show up for her. She realizes that both Papert and his research partner, Minsky, value intellectual brilliance over consideration for people’s feelings.

Turkle’s research at Papert’s lab develops her theory of the impact of “evocative objects” on identity. Turkle reflects on the experience of a young girl who gains a sense of control by being able to intricately program a machine, which increases her control over her addictions in real life. Turkle furthers her understanding of the relationship between people and objects through her students’ class assignments, in which they reflect on an “evocative object” from their childhood and examine its impact on their scientific mindset. One student views Freudian slips as computing errors, bits of dropped code, from which Turkle extracts the concept that computers think in absolutes. She interviews hackers devoted to “beautiful machines” and notes their obsession with elegant code, in which the goal is to increase simplicity and efficiency. Turkle reflects on the social and cultural shifts surrounding technology, in which machines are increasingly designed to entertain rather than teach or facilitate thinking.

Turkle and Papert start to plan their wedding, but Papert reveals that he has been married more than once before and will need to get a Jewish annulment from his first marriage before they can be wed according to Jewish tradition. Turkle is shocked and disappointed when the annulment is not approved. They will need to be married by a nontraditional rabbi who does not require the official paperwork. When Turkle and Papert are buying her engagement ring in the jewelry store, Papert also purchases a gummy bear charm for a woman he used to date. Turkle avoids facing these issues and marries Papert despite his inability to be honest and faithful. Turkle avoids talking about their troubled relationship to her psychanalyst and eventually stops attending analysis to avoid the truth.

Through her continued AI research, Turkle studies the links between morality and robots. She debates the morality of teaching children to code with the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, who argues that it is immoral to teach children to program computers because the technology demands efficiency without consideration of values. Turkle argues that people’s interaction with computers causes them to reflect on the human capacity for moral judgment and records conversations of children discussing the likelihood that a machine can cheat. She emphasizes that machines are incapable of human emotion because they do not have bodies that will die. She realizes that at MIT, the students are operating in a system that portrays machines as neutral, not considering the way that interacting with machines changes people’s thinking and feeling selves. Turkle dedicates herself as a teacher to helping students get in touch with their empathy.

Papert selfishly cancels his daughter, Diane’s, trip to Disneyland, choosing to seclude himself and study instead. This triggers Turkle’s memories of her biological father, Charlie’s, abandonment. During Thanksgiving in 1978, she decides to hire a private detective to search for him. A few months later, they find him, and she sets up a meeting.

At their first meetup, Turkle immediately relates to Charlie’s passion for knowledge, which he channels into his books about vegetarianism and peace and disproving Einstein’s theories. When he reveals that he experimented on Turkle as a toddler by withholding attention, she is horrified and calls Papert to come join her. When he arrives, he worries about his own similarities to Charlie, realizing that they are both eccentric and “odd.” Turkle realizes that Papert does not know how to care for her, only how to objectify her to better understand her and define their relationship.

After meeting her father, Turkle is raw and vulnerable, which puts a new stress on her and Papert’s relationship. He and Turkle agree to live separately while he works in Paris and she works in Boston. She’s excited to visit him in Paris, hoping for a romantic fantasy trip that will rekindle their romance, but when Turkle arrives, he tells her he has been living with another woman in his Paris apartment. In 1982, they decide to get a divorce. Turkle feels relieved and starts psychoanalysis again, finally able to be honest with herself about her and Papert’s relationship.