What is the new digital technology doing to us and the people around us? Is it good for us or can it have negative effects, leaving us cocooned in our own little worlds, no longer engaging with each other in “real time”.
Our world is, increasingly, a digital one. Over half of the planet's adult population now spend more of their waking hours 'plugged in' than not, whether to the internet, mobile telephony, or other digital media. To email, text, tweet and blog our way through our careers, relationships and even our family lives is now the status quo. But what effect is this need for constant connection really having? For the first time, Tom Chatfield examines what our 'wired' life is really doing to our minds, for better and for worse. This book asks what it means not simply to live within a digital century, but to live well with it and within it. Unlike most other contemporary accounts, it is neither a tale of technology doom nor glory, but a pragmatic guide to what questions we need to ask of the world around us; what it might mean to answer these; and what practical steps might allow us all both to choose and to use the tools at our disposal, and to prosper within a digital century in as fully human a sense as possible. One in the new series of books from The School of Life, launched May 2012: How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield How to Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton
Tom Chatfield is an author, commentator and technology theorist. He has written books on the culture of video gaming, new media and politics and the history of digital ideas. Tom has worked for a range of companies including Google, Six to Start and Intervox, and has spoken at forums including TED Global, the RSA and the World IT Congress. For more, see www.tomchatfield.net.
The School of Life is a London-based enterprise that is dedicated to the most useful ideas relevant to the dilemmas of everyday life. We consider questions like: How can we fulfil our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Can relationships last a lifetime? We don't have all the answers, but we will direct you towards a variety of useful ideas from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish and console.
