108$2.6 trillion in damage: “Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid,” Lloyd’s, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.aer.com//sites/default/files/Solar_Storm_Risk_to_the_North_American_Electric_Grid_0.pdf, and “Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts,” National Academies Press, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507.
Part 2 : Breaking Away
111“When from our better selves”: William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” in M. H. Abrams, gen. ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2 (New York: Norton, 1993), 241.
Chapter 6: Attention!
“In proportion as our inward life fails”: Brooks Atkinson, ed., Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 723–24.
“And none will hear the postman’s knock”: W. H. Auden, “Night Mail,” The English Auden (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1977).
Animals, including humans, become obsessed: Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 54–55.
I’m not sure I’m as far gone: Laura Vanderkam, “Stop Checking Your Email, Now,” Fortune, October 8, 2012, http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/10/08/stop-checking-your-email-now/.
“a minor fit of hysterics”: R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
“fortify the wavering mind”: Seneca, Dialogues and Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 139.
“when it comes to the combination”: Tom Chatfield, How to Thrive in the Digital Age (London: Macmillan, 2012), 32.
“whenever kids exceed the one to two hours”: “Media and Children,” American Academy of Pediatrics, AAP Policy, http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx.
Curiously, the largest hit: “The Rise of E-Reading,” Pew Research Center, April 5, 2012, http://libraries.pewinternet.org/files/legacy-pdf/The%20rise%20of%20e-reading%204.5.12.pdf.
the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a massive and scathing report: “To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence,” Research Report no. 47, November 2007, National Endowment for the Arts, http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/ToRead.pdf.
123“Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York: Vintage Classics, 2008), 58.
126“At first she could not read”: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (New York: Knopf, 1992), 118.
“Anna read and understood”: Ibid., 118.
“The gaze-sensitive intervention”: Sidney D’Mello et al., “Gaze Tutor: A Gaze-Reactive Intelligent Tutoring System,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70, no. 5 (2012): 377–98.
“To kill me?”: Tolstoy, War and Peace, 189.
132“not with his intellect, but with his whole being”: Ibid., 1060.
“a causeless springtime feeling of joy”: Ibid., 423.
“the so-called great men”: Ibid., 606.
Milton sat down at his parents’ home: Thomas N. Corns, ed., A Companion to Milton (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 487.
In the first draft of this letter: David Masson, Life of John Milton, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1859), 290–92.
“None of this had even a hope”: “Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address,” YouTube, accessed March 21, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc.
Chapter 7: Memory (The Good Error)
“Forgetting used to be a failing”: James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (New York: Pantheon, 2011), 407.
“That’s surprising. I thought this was going to be difficult”: “Dr. Brenda Milner,” CBC News, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Health/ID/2323340807/.
“The Internet allows us to know”: John Brockman, ed., Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 239.
Perhaps we should side with philosopher Lewis Mumford: Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 182.
Author Clive Thompson wondered: Clive Thompson, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,” Wired, September 25, 2007, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson.
A team of psychologists has reported in Science: Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and Daniel M. Wegner, “Google Effects on Memory,” Science 333, no. 6043 (2011): 776–78.
“Having thus made up his family”: Seneca, The Epistles of Lucius Annæus Seneca, vol. 1 (London: W. Woodfall, 1786), 102–03.
“Every dog-eared page”: Brockman, Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?, 300.
146“As the Web grew”: Ibid., 300.
“I consider that a man’s brain”: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, vol. 1 (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003), 14.
“are created in the present”: Charles Fernyhough, “What Our Memories Tell Us About Ourselves,” ideas.time.com, accessed March 21, 2014, http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/what-our-memories-tell-us-about-ourselves/.
“Every time you recall a memory”: “Scientists Explore the Illusion of Memory,” CBC News, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www .cbc.ca/news/health/story/2013/01/03/health-inside-your-brain-memory-illusion.html.
“Memory changes things”: Achy Obejas, “My Interview with Jorge Luis Borges,” accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.wbez.org/blog/achy-obejas/2011-08-24/my-interview-jorge-luis-borges-90978.
In a 2013 paper: Corina Sas and Steve Whittaker, “Design for Forgetting: Disposing of Digital Possessions After a Breakup,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, 2013, http://people.ucsc.edu/~swhittak/papers/design_for_forgetting_chi_2013.pdf.
In Manguel’s A History of Reading: Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (Toronto: Vintage, 1998), 60–61.
“The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine”: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 2003), 63–64.
Chapter 8: Hooking Up
On a single Sunday: “Grindr Sets Records,” Grindr.com/blog, October 2, 2012.
Meanwhile, Chatroulette links strangers: Robert J. Moore, “Chatroulette Is 89 Percent Male, 47 Percent American, and 13 Percent Perverts,” TechCrunch, accessed January 7, 2014, http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/16/chatroulette-stats-male-perverts/.
Youths send homemade porn to one another: “Snapchat’s Expired Snaps Are Not Deleted, Just Hidden,” The Guardian, accessed January 7, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-infosecurity/snapchat-photos-not-deleted-hidden.
Surveys conducted in 1980: Eli J. Finkel et al., “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13, no. 1 (2012): 3–66.
Today, at least one in five: “Online Dating Statistics,” Statistic Brain, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.statisticbrain.com/online-dating-statistics/.
According to a massive 2010 BBC World Service report: “New Global Poll Suggests Wide Enthusiasm for Online Dating,” BBC World Service, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/02_february/13/poll.shtml.
similar Pew Research Center work: “Dating Digitally,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, accessed March 21, 2014, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/10/21/online-dating-relationships/.
83 percent of us: I-Mei Lin and Erik Peper, “Psychophysiological Patterns During Cell Phone Text Messaging: A Preliminary Study,” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 34, no. 1 (2009): 53–57.
“as long as a guy can keep clicking”: Gary Wilson, “The Great Porn Experiment,” TEDxGlasgow, accessed March 24, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU.
According to Trussler’s report: “Pride, Prejudice, & Determinants of Health,” Community-Based Research Centre, 2012, accessed January 16, 201
4, http://cbrc.net/sites/default/files/PPDYouthF%20-AC.pdf.
When 606 students were canvassed: Donald S. Strassberg et al., “Sexting by High School Students: An Exploratory and Descriptive Study,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 42, no. 1 (2013): 15–21.
On Grindr, too, it is the digital natives: “Happy Birthday Grindr!,” Grindr Blog for March 25, 2013, http://grindr.com/blog/2013/03.
Comparison of the two shows: Michelle Rotermann, “Trends in Teen Sexual Behaviour and Condom Use,” Statistics Canada, Health Reports 19, no. 3 (September 2008), http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2008003/article/10664-eng.pdf.
In fact, the only significant change: Michelle Rotermann, “Sexual Behaviour and Condom Use of 15- to 24-Year-Olds in 2003 and 2009/2010,” Statistics Canada, Health Reports 23, no. 1 (March 2012), accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2012001/article/11632-eng.htm.
“The knight departing for new adventures”: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1953), 658.
Mobile users check their PlentyofFish: Markus Frind, interview with author, July 31, 2013.
Marshall McLuhan, in The Gutenberg Galaxy, writes about the garden of senses: Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), 21.
PlentyofFish is especially solicitous: Markus Frind, interview with author, July 31, 2013.
Chapter 9: How to Absent Oneself
Ah, where have they gone”: Milan Kundera, Slowness, trans. Linda Asher (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 3.
“intrude itself”: Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (London: Penguin, 1984), 18.
“psychic distance . . . never natural”: Postman, Technopoly, 185.
“one good test of whether an economy is humanistic”: Lanier, Who Owns the Future?, 365.
“You have to see that there is more”: William Powers, Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 165.
“The surface of the earth is soft”: Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1992), 286.
“I did not wish to live what was not life”: Ibid., 80.
“I did not wish to take a cabin passage”: Ibid., 286.
“The whistle of the locomotive”: Ibid., 103.
“And it is worth the while to be warned”: Ibid., 105.
“They wanted to make inquiries about themselves”: Glenn Gould, speaking in the documentary film Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (2009), directed by Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont.
We know that the spread of writing: Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 8.
We know that “the immortal inconclusiveness of Plato”: Ibid., 10.
“through a veil of print”: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 6.
“by far the greater number of new ideas”: Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self (New York: Free Press, 2005), 198.
“men’s greatest achievements are the products of their seclusion”: Seneca, Dialogues and Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 119.
“It is, however, necessary to combine the two things”: Ibid., 137.
The historian of ideas Noga Arikha: John Brockman, ed., Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 42.
“I waver”: Ibid., 42.
“Those who experience the first onset”: McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, 27.
Epilogue: What Comes Across, What Stays Behind
“the historical Luddites were neither childish nor naïve”: Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993), 43.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
absence, 13, 14, 22, 39, 101, 136, 184
engineering of, 39, 101
fear of, 209
going without Internet, 185, 186, 189–97, 200, 208–9
Harris’s Analog August, 189–97
loss of, 8, 14, 15, 21, 48, 70, 109, 187–88, 207
of opinion, 84
preservation of and return to, 109, 204–6
remembering, 202–3
solitude, 8, 14, 39, 46, 48, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199
value of, 203
Acquisti, Alessandro, 66
adrenaline, 10
affective computing, 61, 62, 67
Agger, Ben, 68
aliens, 105
Alone Together (Turkle), 30
alphabet, 32, 205
Altfest, Lewis, 169–70
Amazon, 84, 87, 96
Ambrose, St., 117n
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), 121
Anderson, Janna, 40
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 125–26
Antyllus, 159
Arikha, Noga, 204–5
artificial intelligence, 56–57, 60, 65
AshleyMadison, 174–75
Atchity, Matt, 90
Atmospheric and Environmental Research, 108
attention, 36, 40, 116–22, 124–27, 129, 131, 135
continuous partial, 10
distractions and, 30, 36, 113–17, 121, 124–28, 133, 135, 194
monitoring of, 129–31
attention disorders, 34, 121
Auden, W. H., 70, 113–14
Augustine, St., 117n
Austen, Jane, 115–16
authenticity, 101–6
Batu Lima, 1–2
Baum, L. Frank, 94, 100
BBC World Service, 168
Beauvoir, Simone de, 176
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 203
Benjamin, Walter, 83, 100–101
Berners-Lee, Tim, 47, 152n
Biderman, Noel, 175–76
Bieber, Justin, 90
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 130
Blackmore, Susan, 42–44
Blendr, 173
Bloomberg, Mike, 90
BMW, 59
Boll, Uwe, 89
books, 12, 13, 20–21, 28, 33–34, 103, 115–18, 149
Google Books, 102–3
printing press, 11–13, 16, 20–21, 33–34, 43, 83, 98, 145n, 202
Unbound Publishing and, 88
see also reading
Borges, Jorge Luis, 154
boyd, danah, 64n
brain, 25, 27, 35, 36, 54, 118–19, 146, 193
of children, 36–40
Internet and, 37–38, 40, 142, 185
memory and, 139, 140, 142, 146, 151–53, 155, 158
multitasking and, 119, 121
orienting response in, 120, 121, 125
passive learning and, 39
plasticity of, 36–38, 47, 141, 159, 193
reading and, 33–34
synesthesia and, 62–63
techno burnout and, 10–11
Bregman, Peter, 127–28
Bryson, Lyman, 179
bullying, 53, 62–66
Todd and, 49–53
ByWard Market, 88
cabinets of curiosities, 147
Cain, Susan, 204
Capek, Karel, 56–57
Carr, Nicholas, 38, 86, 193
Carrington, Richard, 107
Carrington Event, 107–9
Carson, Anne, 198n
Catholic Church, 12, 20
cell phones, see phones
Chapdelaine, Morris, 171–72
Charles V, King, 99n
Chatfield, Tom, 119
The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection Page 23