Book Thoughts - The End of Absence by Michael Harris

I want to use this blog to kind of keep track of the books I read this year, but I'm not really sure how I want to do it, so I'm trying a few different things here...

This week I finished "The End of Absence" by Michael Harris, and while I'm not sure I whole-heartedly recommend the book, I did like the thought-paths that reading it started me down.

It has definitely left me evaluating how and why I use the technology I use, and the technology that the boys use. Grant has started me listening to a podcast called New Tech City, and in a funny coincidence the week I've been finishing this book the podcast started a "Bored and Brilliant" challenge, encouraging people to step away from their technology a bit to create more space for boredom, for being creative. So it's been kind of fun to be reading this book and also listening to Manoush Zamarodi, the voice of New Tech City, talk about the benefits of less technology in our lives.

I have been thinking about the constancy of information that we are surrounded by in this age of google and wikipedia, and how I really do spend less time trying to figure things out myself, and am so quick to just ask Siri when the boys ask me a question.

One thing he talked about several times was how the youth of today are so inundated with technology that they can't really separate themselves from it, they will never have a separate identity outside of technology that those of us who grew up before the age of the internet had as kids. While I can see his point, at times it felt a bit over blown to me. My kids have time with technology every day, yes, but I, and most of my peers, did too. Sure, it wasn't the internet, it was just TV, or Nintendo, or archaic video games, but growing up in the 70's and 80's wasn't like we went from a complete dearth of technology to being completely submerged in it.

I guess I think that while today's technologies may be more prevalent and more accesible and probably more addicting then the technologies of yester-year, but I knew plenty of kids growing up where the T.V. was on constantly at their house, and teenagers who wore their walkman like it was part of their clothes, and I think people found plenty of ways to avoid thinking deeply then without the internet. I think the primary problem is a choice to put away the easier mental tasks and commit to digging into the harder ones, and while the technology of the day may provide more ways to avoid that, it's an old problem, not a new one.

But I guess the constant availability of So. Much. Information. does really make us need to be much more mindful of what we are using and why. So it was a good read overall.