The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr
The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr
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The Glass Cage
Automation and Us

Author: Nicholas Carr

Narrator: Nicholas Carr

Unabridged: 8 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/29/2014


Synopsis

At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.In The Glass Cage, bestselling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.

About Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as The Big Switch and Does IT Matter? His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and the New Republic, and he writes the widely read blog Rough Type. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and an executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kunal on November 23, 2014

I loved his earlier book, “The Shallows”, which dealt with the issue of how the Web could be altering our ability to think deep. The book was well researched and well argued. In this book he is raising similar concerns about automation. He uses various examples of how increasing automation is making......more

Goodreads review by Jennie on June 18, 2014

The best non-fiction books, in my opinion, shouldn't just entertain you, they should change you. Carr, like in "The Shallows," expertly takes an ubiquitous convenience of modern life -- previously, the internet, and now, automation -- and dismantles everyday idealistic assumption about the benefits......more

Goodreads review by Jim on October 26, 2014

I loved absolutely every page of this book. It's not just a book about technology and automation, it's a book about learning what it means to be human.......more