Hamlet's BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

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Harper Collins, Aug 9, 2011 - Social Science - 288 pages

Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose a burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave.

How to solve this problem? Hamlet’s BlackBerry argues that we just need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. William Powers sets out to solve what he calls the conundrum of connectedness. Reaching into the past—using his own life as laboratory and object lesson—he draws on some of history’s most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, to demonstrate that digital connectedness serves us best when it’s balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet’s BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.

 

Contents

In a Digital World
9
Falling Out with the Connected
37
The Trouble with Not Really
67
Plato Discovers Distance
83
Seneca on Inner Space
101
Gutenberg and the Business
121
Shakespeare on the Beauty
137
Ben Franklin on Positive
157
Thoreau on Making
175
McLuhan and the Thermostat
193
Practical Philosophies for Every
209
The Internet Sabbath
223
Back to the Room
235
Acknowledgments
241
FurtherReading
263
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About the author (2011)

Award-winning media critic William Powers has written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and McSweeney's, among other publications. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife, the author Martha Sherrill, and their son.

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