i know ive blogged abt this before but does anyone else remember the study on the children w/ a broken furby who like. removed its skin and cut it into as many pieces as those who were present for the ceremony to be taken far away and buried as a means of appeasing it?? & they like?? defined the skin as the ghost and the rest as the goblin and both were angry that the children had killed it??????????????? please
I read about it in Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other which btw good book. here:
[Caption: OP’s second post is series of images from Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other:
First image: “Operating Procedures” is bolded subtitle. Text reads, “In the 1980s, the computer toy Merlin made happy and sad noises depending on whether it was winning or losing the sound-and-light game it played with children. Children saw Merlin as ‘sort of alive’ because of how well it played memory games, but they did not fully believe in Merlin’s shows of emotions. When a Merlin broke down, children were sorry to lose a playmate. When a Furby doesn’t work, however, children see a creature that might be in pain.
“Lily, ten, worries that her broken Furby is hurting. But she doesn’t want to turn it off, because ‘that means you aren’t taking care of it.’ She fears that if she shuts off a Furby in pain, she might make things worse. Two eight-year-olds fret about how much their Furbies sneeze. The first worries that his sneezing Furby is allergic to him. The other fears his Furby got its cold because ‘I didn’t do a good enough job taking care of him.’ Several children become tense when Furbies make unfamiliar sounds that might be signals of distress. I observe children with their other toys: dolls, toy soldiers, action figures. If these toys make strange sounds, they are usually put aside; broken toys lead easily to boredom. But when a Furby is in trouble, children ask, ‘Is it tired?’ 'Is it sad?’ 'Have I hurt it?’ 'Is it sick?’ 'What shall I do?’
“Taking care of a robot is a high-stakes game. Things can – and do – go wrong. In one kindergarten, when a Furby breaks down, the children decide they want to heal it. Ten children volunteer, seeing themselves as doctors in an emergency room. They decide they’ll begin by taking it apart.
“The proceedings begin in a state of relative calm. When talking about their sick Furby, the children insist that this breakdown does not mean the end: people get sick and get better. But as soon as scissors and pliers appear, they become anxious. At this point, Alicia screams, 'The Furby is going to die!’ Sven, to his classmates’ horror, pinpoints the moment when Furbies die: it happens when a Furby’s skin is ripped off. Sven considers the Furby as an animal. You can shave an animal’s fur, and it will live. But you cannot take its skin off. As the operation continues, Sven reconsiders. Perhaps the Furby can live without its skin, 'but it will be cold.’ He doesn’t back completely away from the biological (the Furby is sensitive to the cold) but reconstructs it. For Sven, the biological now includes creatures such as Furbies, whose 'insides’ stay 'all in the same place’ when their skin is removed. This accommodation calms him down. If a Furby is simultaneously biological and mechanical, which is certainly removing the Furby’s skin, is not necessarily destructive. Children make theories when they are confused or anxious. A good theory can reduce anxiety.
"But some children become more anxious as the operation continues. One suggests that if the Furby dies, it might haunt them. It is alive enough to turn into a ghost. Indeed, a group of children start to call the empty Furby skin 'the ghost of Furby’ and the Furby’s naked body 'the goblin.’ They are not happy that this operation might leave a Furby goblin and ghost at large. One girl comes up with the idea that the ghost of Furby will be less fearful if distributed. She asks if it would be okay 'if every child took home a piece of Furby skin.’ She is told this would be fine, but, unappeased, she asks the same question two more times. In the end, most children leave with a bit of Furby fur. Some talk about burying it when they get home. They leave room for a private ritual to placate the goblin and say good-bye.
"Inside the classroom, most of the children feel they are doing the best they can with a sick pet. But from outside the classroom, the Furby surgery looks alarming. Children passing by call out, 'You killed him.’ 'How dare you kill Furby?’ 'You’ll go to Furby jail.’ Denise, eight, watches some of the goings-on from the safety of the hall. She has a Furby at home and says that she does not like to talk about its problems as diseases because 'Furbies are not animals.’ She uses the word 'fake’ to mean nonbiological and says, 'Furbies are fake, and they don’t get diseases.’ But later, she reconsiders her position when her own Furby’s batteries run out and the robot, so chatty only moments before, becomes inert. Denise panics: 'It’s dead. It’s dead right now…. Its eyes are closed.’ She then declares her Furby 'both fake and dead.’ Denise concludes that worn-out batteries and water can kill a Furby. It is a mechanism, but alive enough to die.”
Link to the passage on Google Books: here. That’s super interesting, I might have to get this book.
