Overview

This is a revealing expose of how our love affair with ever - new technologies has undermined interpersonal relationships. Tablets, smart phones, and social networks all promise better opportunities to connect and stay connected. Yet what they really do is replace face-to-face interactions and disguise our growing inability to trust others. Have we arrived at a new kind of consciousness in which electronic interfaces receive most of our attention to the detriment of real interpersonal communication and empathy? The ""Big Disconnect"" offers a bracing look at a world where intimacy with machines is increasingly replacing mutual human intimacy. In a sweeping overview that ranges from the 19th century to the present, it reveals how consumer technologies changed from analgesic devices that banished the loneliness of a newly urban generation in the Gilded Age to prosthetic machines that act as substitutes for companionship.

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9781616145958

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Giles Slade is dead-on with regard to the dangerous way we are embracing our machines. What we have lost is the sense of identity as part of a bigger world: nature. . . . In The Big Disconnect, we relearn that our ability to connect with nonhuman nature is an essential part of being human. -DAVID SUZUKI, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, and author of The Sacred Balance A perceptive, challenging meditation on the isolating consequences of modern technology. Do you think all those clever gadgets, apps, and websites are making your life better? If so, Giles Slade would like a word with you. Slade is a very smart man; you may not always agree with him, but you need to listen to what he has to say. -MARK KATZ, author of Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

Giles Slade is dead-on with regard to the dangerous way we are embracing our machines. What we have lost is the sense of identity as part of a bigger world: nature. . . . In The Big Disconnect, we relearn that our ability to connect with nonhuman nature is an essential part of being human. <br>-DAVID SUZUKI, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, and author of The Sacred Balance<br><br> A perceptive, challenging meditation on the isolating consequences of modern technology. Do you think all those clever gadgets, apps, and websites are making your life better? If so, Giles Slade would like a word with you. Slade is a very smart man; you may not always agree with him, but you need to listen to what he has to say. <br>-MARK KATZ, author of Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

Giles Slade is dead-on with regard to the dangerous way we are embracing our machines. What we have lost is the sense of identity as part of a bigger world: nature. . . . In The Big Disconnect, we relearn that our ability to connect with nonhuman nature is an essential part of being human. -DAVID SUZUKI, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, and author of The Sacred Balance A perceptive, challenging meditation on the isolating consequences of modern technology. Do you think all those clever gadgets, apps, and websites are making your life better? If so, Giles Slade would like a word with you. Slade is a very smart man; you may not always agree with him, but you need to listen to what he has to say. -MARK KATZ, author of Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

Giles Slade is dead-on with regard to the dangerous way we are embracing our machines. What we have lost is the sense of identity as part of a bigger world: nature. . . . In The Big Disconnect, we relearn that our ability to connect with nonhuman nature is an essential part of being human. -DAVID SUZUKI, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, and author of The Sacred Balance A perceptive, challenging meditation on the isolating consequences of modern technology. Do you think all those clever gadgets, apps, and websites are making your life better? If so, Giles Slade would like a word with you. Slade is a very smart man; you may not always agree with him, but you need to listen to what he has to say. -MARK KATZ, author of Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

Author Information

Giles Slade is an award-winning author, and a regular contributor to the HuffingtonPost.com.

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