This is one of the pieces which after you read, it really feels out of place to comment, because you are afraid of being insincere, which I very much may be.
Nonetheless, thank you Carr! I have learnt from your work a deal. And I still am. Thank you so much!
What’s fascinating about this concept of being shaped by the nature of the medium in which we engage, is that some promote fundamentally positive and adaptable human behaviors. The technology of language is fundamentally structured to shape us socially. There is no real language in isolation. Thus, to engage more with the technology of language is to be fundamentally shaped into a more social being. Similarly, the structure of reading is fundamentally shaping our brains to engage our imagination, and ability to appreciate conceptual and symbolic abstractions. In the case of the smartphone it appears structured against adaptable behavior. It is a small box of hallucinations, absorbing us into an environment which doesn’t truly exist. As beings which operate from cognitive mechanisms aimed at observing and making sense of the material world, a brick that absorbs us into a nonsensical immaterial environment appears entirely antithetical to our flourishing.
This is one of the pieces which after you read, it really feels out of place to comment, because you are afraid of being insincere, which I very much may be.
Nonetheless, thank you Carr! I have learnt from your work a deal. And I still am. Thank you so much!
Smartphone usage has felt like going into a (anti)social atomization centrifuge.
What’s fascinating about this concept of being shaped by the nature of the medium in which we engage, is that some promote fundamentally positive and adaptable human behaviors. The technology of language is fundamentally structured to shape us socially. There is no real language in isolation. Thus, to engage more with the technology of language is to be fundamentally shaped into a more social being. Similarly, the structure of reading is fundamentally shaping our brains to engage our imagination, and ability to appreciate conceptual and symbolic abstractions. In the case of the smartphone it appears structured against adaptable behavior. It is a small box of hallucinations, absorbing us into an environment which doesn’t truly exist. As beings which operate from cognitive mechanisms aimed at observing and making sense of the material world, a brick that absorbs us into a nonsensical immaterial environment appears entirely antithetical to our flourishing.
I don't think a UK publisher is lined up yet, but I assume you'll be able to get Norton's US edition somehow.