Big Disconnect ─ The Story of Technology and Loneliness

A book for popular readers on the subject of technology and alienation, The Big Disconnect is written in a smart, breezy style. It relies on personal stories from the author, and a dazzling range of historical details, from the invention of the harmonica to the establishment of Piggly Wiggly self-serve groceries and the relaxation functions of the human hormone oxytocin. Nonfiction fans will revel in the author's range of interests. The book's core premise is that technology causes people to be lonely, and to alleviate their loneliness, people often turn to more technology. Beneath the author's engaging play of facts and stories, however, lie assertions that would take more work to prove than he is willing to do, or that are not provable at all: "Did bipedalism actually encourage music?" the author asks, and off we go on another jaunt. Whether readers will agree with his conclusions depends on whether they would have agreed with them anyway. Taken with a sense of humor and a grain of salt, it is harmless and very entertaining, and asks nothing difficult from us. In the end, the book notes that technology isn't bad, and young folks are using it as a way to connect. MC battles and iPod parties are vaguely connected with being out in nature, which is good for us. A book on how technology makes us lonely ends with an invitation from the author to contact him on his website. The book is typical in describing Amazon.com at length to air the author's concerns, which turn out to be a meditation on animism rather than a discussion of what it could mean for a private corporation to have a monopoly on books. However, the author makes some insightful points; perhaps the most important is that Thoreau wrote in similarly grand terms about technology and alienation, so these issues have been with us for longer than we think. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Giles Slade is the author of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, which won the IPPY gold medal for best environmental book of 2007. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post and is featured in The Light Bulb Conspiracy, a MediaPro documentary about planned obsolescence that premiered on European television in seven languages in 2011.