Life on the Screen tells how the computer profoundly shapes our ways of thinking and feeling, how ideas carried by technology are reshaped by people for their own purposes, how computers are not just changing our lives but changing our selves. This story is borne of Turkle's past decade of research. She soon turned to the world of Internet Relay Chat, newsgroups, bulletin boards, and commercial online services. She also examined the burgeoning cyberspace lives of children and teenagers. That the Internet links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way we think and the way we form our communities.
Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual.
We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity. Turkle's own metaphor of windows serves well to introduce the following samplings from her new book. Those boxed-off areas on the screen, Turkle writes, allow us to cycle through cyberspace and real life, over and over. The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time.