The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection (31 page)

Prelude, The
(Wordsworth), 111

Price, Susan, 40

printing press, 11–13, 16, 20–21, 33–34, 43, 83, 98, 145
n,
202

Printing Press as an Agent of Change, The
(Eisenstein), 12
n

Project TACT, 169–71

Proust, Marcel, 159–61

psychiatry and psychology, 65, 96

Pygmalion
(Shaw), 57

Qpid, 180

Qrushr Girls, 173

Quadratus, Satellius, 144

Quiet
(Cain), 204

radio, 7, 17, 31, 205

railroads, 200–202

Raonic, Milos, 129

Raytheon, 66
n

reading, 34, 115–18, 123

brain and, 33–34

Milton and, 133, 135

online, 130–31

of
War and Peace,
115, 116, 118, 120, 122–26, 128–29, 131–33, 135, 136

see also
books

relationships, 164–83

reviews, 81–84, 87–90, 92–93

rewards, 114

Riley, Pete, 107

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 80

Riot, 66
n

Robertson, Ian, 141

robots, 29–30, 56–57

Rogen, Seth, 192

Roman, Elias, 90–91

Rose, Jonathan, 81

Ross, Robert, 169–70

Rotten Tomatoes, 89, 90

Rowling, J. K., 66
n

Royal College of Engineering, 107

R.U.R.
(Capek), 56–57

Russell, Bertrand, 195

Sabinus, Calvisius, 143–45

Sas, Corina, 156

Science,
142

Scoville, William Beecher, 138

search engines, 142–43, 146

Second Life,
104

Seed,
105

Seife, Charles, 145, 146

Sejong, 12
n

self-documentation, 68–71

selfies, 68

Seneca, 118, 143–44, 203–4

senses, 161, 179, 205

synesthesia and, 62–63

Sergeant Star, 59–60

Sesame Street,
1–2, 3

sex, 104, 164–77

pornography, 83, 88, 168, 169, 174

Shallows, The
(Carr), 38, 86

Shaw, George Bernard, 57

Shelley, Mary, 56

Skinner, B. F., 114

Skype, 106

Sloth Club, 204

Slowness
(Kundera), 184

Small, Gary, 10–11, 37–38

smartphones,
see
phones

Smith, Gordon, 186

“smupid” thinking, 185–86

Snapchat, 168

social media, 19, 48, 55, 106, 150–51, 175

Socrates, 32–33, 40

solitude, 8, 14, 39, 46, 48, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199

Songza, 90–91, 125

Space Weather,
107

Squarciafico, Hieronimo, 33, 35

Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), 94

Stanford University, 94–97

Statistics Canada, 174

sticklebacks, 124

Stone, Linda, 10, 169

Storr, Anthony, 203

stress hormones, 10

Study in Scarlet, A
(Doyle), 147–48

suicide, 53–54, 63, 67

of Clementi, 63, 67

of Todd, 50–52, 67

sun, 107–9

surveillance, 66
n

synesthesia, 62–63

Tamagotchis, 29–30

technologies, 7, 18, 20, 21, 99, 179, 188, 192, 200, 203, 205, 206

evolution of, 43

Luddites and, 208

penetration rates of, 31

technology-based memes (temes), 42–44

Technopoly
(Postman), 98

television, 7, 17, 27, 31, 69, 120

attention problems and, 121

temes (technology-based memes), 42–44

text messaging, 28, 30–31, 35–36, 100, 169, 192–94

Thamus, King, 32–33, 35, 98, 141, 145

Thatcher, Margaret, 74

theater reviews, 81–84, 88–89

Thompson, Clive, 141–42, 144–45

Thoreau, Henry David, 22, 113, 197–200, 202, 204

Thrun, Sebastian, 97

Thurston, Baratunde, 191

Time,
154

Timehop, 148–51, 160

Tinbergen, Niko, 124

Todd, Amanda, 49–53, 55, 62, 67, 70–72

Todd, Carol, 51–52, 71–72

Tolle, Eckhart, 102

Tolstoy, Leo:

Anna Karenina,
125–26

War and Peace,
115, 116, 118, 120, 122–26, 128–29, 131–33, 135, 136

To Save Everything, Click Here
(Morozov), 55

touch-sensitive displays, 27

train travel, 200–202

Transcendental Meditation (TM), 76–78

TripAdvisor, 92

Trollope, Anthony, 47–48

Trussler, Terry, 172

Turing, Alan, 60, 61, 67, 68, 186, 190

Turing test, 60–61

Turkle, Sherry, 30, 55–56, 103–4

Twain, Mark, 73

Twitch.tv, 104

Twitter, 9, 31, 46, 63, 149

Udacity, 97

Uhls, Yalda T., 69

Unbound Publishing, 88

Understanding Media
(McLuhan), 14

University of Guelph, 53

Valmont, Sebastian, 166

Vancouver, 3–4

Vancouver,
8–11, 15

Vaughn, Vince, 89

Vespasiano da Bisticci, 33

video games, 32, 104

Virtual Self, The
(Young), 68, 71

Voltaire, 83

Walden
(Thoreau), 113, 198–200

Wales, Jimmy, 77

Walker, C. J., 79–80

War and Peace
(Tolstoy), 115, 116, 118, 120, 122–26, 128–29, 131–33, 135, 136

Watanabe, Takeo, 38

Watt, James, 20

Wegener, Jonathan, 149–51

Weinberger, David, 81

Weizenbaum, Joseph, 57, 59, 108, 188

Wharton, Edith, 117

What Technology Wants
(Kelly), 43

Whittaker, Steve, 156

Who Owns the Future?
(Lanier), 85

Wikipedia, 63, 73–79, 142, 147, 185

administrators of, 76

Arbitration Committee of, 77–78

errors and hoaxes on, 73–75, 78

Feldman entry on, 73–74, 79

gender bias and, 79

Transcendental Meditation entry on, 76–78

Wikipediocracy, 79

Wilson, Gary, 169

Wired,
142, 144

Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The
(Baum), 94, 100

Wordsworth, William, 111

World Wide Web, 31, 47

writing, 32–34, 43, 98, 145, 202

Wunderkammer,
147

Yelp, 84, 87–88

Young, Nora, 68, 71

YouTube, 19, 69, 70, 101

Todd and, 49–53, 70

1
. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein points out in
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
that the sixteenth-century writer Michel de Montaigne had access to more books at his own home than earlier scholars could have encountered over a lifetime of global travels.

2
. The meters and formulas of epic poetry were in fact memory aids that allowed for the recitation of extended narratives held entirely in the orator’s mind. Karl Marx writes in
The German Ideology,
“Is it not inevitable that with the emergence of the press, the singing and the telling and the muse cease; that is, the conditions necessary for epic poetry disappear?”

3
. History is littered with examples of technologies that multiply content and, in doing so, change the monopolies of knowledge in Europe and elsewhere. John Man writes about the Korean emperor Sejong, for example, who in 1443 introduced a simplified alphabet, Hangul, which appalled the elite of his country—they worked to block its proliferation. (See chapter 4 of Man’s
The Gutenberg Revolution
.)

4
. The Kaiser Foundation’s latest numbers tell us that print consumption, outside of reading for school, takes up an average of thirty-eight minutes in every youth’s day (a small but telling drop from forty-three minutes five years earlier).

5
. This is, yes, a hyped-up Hollywood version of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”