At Phi Beta Kappa ceremony, a call to empathy
What is the cultural price of progress? That was the overarching question posed to graduates during Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises Tuesday at Sanders Theatre. In the powerful morning ceremony kicking off Commencement week activities, orator Sherry Turkle, founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, began her address by admitting that she skipped her own Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) ceremonies at Harvard. The year was 1970 and Turkle chose not to go as an act of protest against the Vietnam War. “I wanted to protest what I thought was wrong, but I didn’t want things to be hard. I wanted things to be easy,” she told the audience of graduating seniors and their families. In her speech, titled “How Technology Makes Us Forget What We Know About Life,” the social scientist and author of “Reclaiming Conversation” implored students to learn from her mistake — to slow down, embrace solitude, and,...