The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection (29 page)

“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