So sociology has to deal with the digital. But it is one thing to note that electronic mediation is a rapidly rising phenomenon, and even to observe how, at work and play, in relationships at many levels and degrees of intensity, these new media must be ‘factored in’. It is another to get to grips critically with the inner meanings of such mediation and to offer critical perspectives. Plainly, you don’t attempt to hide your own concern about the apparently ephemeral and fragmentary relationships that seem to be fostered – or at least facilitated – by the new media.Of course, you’re not alone there. Sherry Turkle, who in the 1980s wrote approvingly of the experimental possibilities of new electronic media, for their role in developing what she called The Second Self, and pursued this in a fascinating way in Life on the Screen in the mid-1990s, has now changed her tone in Alone Together. As she says, ‘These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and to protect us from them at the same time.’29 Her catchphrase is that we expect more from technology and less from each other.