Read The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection Online
Authors: Michael Harris
“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.
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., 117
n
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., 117
n
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, 152
n
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, 145
n,
202
Unbound Publishing and, 88
see also
reading
Borges, Jorge Luis, 154
boyd, danah, 64
n
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, 198
n
Catholic Church, 12, 20
cell phones,
see
phones
Chapdelaine, Morris, 171–72
Charles V, King, 99
n
Chatfield, Tom, 119
Chatroulette, 167–68
Chicago Sun-Times,
115
children, 25–41, 45–48
brains of, 36–40
iPad and, 26–27, 45
multitasking and, 27–28
phones and, 28–30
Chip Vivant, 61
Chopra, Aneesh, 65
Christian, Brian, 61
Chunyun, 209
Clay, Cynthia, 61
Clementi, Tyler, 63, 67
Cleverbot, 60
clocks, 98–99, 204
Cocteau, Jean, 17
Computer Power and Human Reason
(Weizenbaum), 188
computers, 16–17, 29, 108, 120, 188
empathy in, 61, 62, 67
intelligence in, 56–57, 60, 65
memory in, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154–56
computing, affective, 61, 62, 67
confessions, 54, 66, 70, 71
Todd and, 50–52, 72
Conquest of Happiness, The
(Russell), 195
continuous partial attention, 10
conversation, 25, 39, 194
Cooper, Anderson, 52, 63
cortisol, 10
CougarLife, 175
Coupland, Douglas, 184–87, 194, 197
Coursera, 95–96, 98, 100
Cowan, Nelson, 154–55, 160
cowbirds, 125
Craigslist, 165, 167, 174
Craven, Dave, 77–78
Cruel Intentions
(Valmont), 166
Cult of the Amateur, The
(Keen), 88
Danielson, Dennis, 157–59
Darwin, Charles, 41, 42
data mining, 82
Dateline,
52
dating, 164–83
Dawkins, Richard, 41, 42
daydreaming, 8, 47–48, 194, 205
De Beers, 101
“Defend the Web” (Berners-Lee), 152
n
Dennett, Daniel, 41
digital immigrants, 15–16, 205
distraction, 30, 36, 113–17, 121, 124–28, 133, 135, 194
Dinakar, Karthik, 62–67, 96
D’Mello, Sidney, 129–30
DragonLance series, 117
dudesnude, 165
Ebert, Roger, 115–18
Economic Journal,
87
education, 94, 96, 183
Coursera, 95–96, 98, 100
dematerialization of, 97
massive open online courses, 95–98
edX, 98
18 Minutes
(Bregman), 127
Einstein, Albert, 151
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 12
n,
83, 145
n,
202
Eliot, T. S., 75
ELIZA, 57–59, 61, 108, 188
Elon University, 40
e-mail, 17, 19, 54, 106, 113–15, 118, 127–28, 156, 169
Harris’s Analog August and, 190–92, 196–97
emotion, 51, 54–56, 60–62, 66, 113, 186
empathy, 30, 38, 67
in computers, 61, 62, 67
Encyclopædia Britannica,
74–75
Enlightenment, 12, 83
EstablishedMen, 175
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
155–56
Evans, James, 86
evolution, 37, 41–43
of technology, 43
Facebook, 9, 19, 24, 31, 64
n,
69, 71, 82, 149, 156, 168, 175
activity feed on, 91
moderation of, 63–64
selfies on, 68
surveillance and, 66
n
Todd and, 50
facts, 141, 145
Fadiman, Clifton, 75
fame, 69–70
Fast Company,
97, 191
Feldman, Erica, 73–74, 79
Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, 147
Fernyhough, Charles, 154
filter bubbles, 91
Financial Times,
185
Forbes,
90
Forster, E. M., 106–7, 109
4chan, 53–54
Foursquare, 150–51
Frankenstein
(Shelley), 56
Frankfurt, Harry G., 92
Franklin, Benjamin, 192
friends, 30–31
Frind, Markus, 182–83