The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us

by Nicholas Carr

Overview

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, best-selling 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351637
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	438,510
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Glass Cage, and Utopia is Creepy. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, and Wired. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife.

Table of Contents

Introdcution

Alert For Operators 1

Chapter 1 Passengers 3

Chapter 2 The Robot At The Gate 19

Chapter 3 On Autopilot 43

Chapter 4 The Degeneration Effect 65

Interlude, With Dancing Mice 87

Chapter 5 White-Collar Computer 93

Chapter 6 World And Screen 125

Chapter 7 Automation For The People 153

Interlude, With Grave Robber 177

Chapter 8 Your Inner Drone 183

Chapter 9 The Love That Lays The Swale in Rows 211

Notes 233

Acknoledgments 263

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

"Nicholas Carr is among the most lucid, thoughtful, and necessary thinkers alive. He’s also terrific company. The Glass Cage should be required reading for everyone with a phone."

Jonathan Safran Foer

"Carr's prose is elegant, and he has an exceptional command of the facts. He serves a varied menu of the ways that technology has failed us, and in every instance he is not only persuasive but undoubtedly right."

Wall Street Journal - Daniel Levitin

"One of Carr's great strengths as a critic is the measured calm of his approach to his material—a rare thing in debates over technology…Carr excels at exploring these gray areas and illuminating for readers the intangible things we are losing by automating our lives."

Democracy - Christine Rosen

"Brings a much-needed humanistic perspective to the wider issues of automation."

Financial Times - Richard Waters

"Nick Carr is the rare thinker who understands that technological progress is both essential and worrying. The Glass Cage is a call for technology that complements our human capabilities, rather than replacing them."

Clay Shirky

"There have been few cautionary voices like Nicholas Carr’s urging us to take stock, especially, of the effects of automation on our very humanness—what makes us who we are as individuals—and on our humanity—what makes us who we are in aggregate."

New York Review of Books - Sue Halpern

"[A] deeply informed reflection on computer automation."

San Francisco Chronicle - G. Pascal Zachary

"Smart, insightful…paint[s] a portrait of a world readily handing itself over to intelligent devices."

Christian Science Monitor - Jacob Axelrad