The stars in our pockets : getting lost and sometimes found in the digital age Cover Image

Book

The stars in our pockets : getting lost and sometimes found in the digital age / Howard Axelrod.

ISBN: 9780807036754
ISBN: 0807036757
Physical Description: 169 pages ; 23 cm
Publisher: Boston : Beacon Press, [2020]
Copyright: &copy;2020.

Axelrod, Howard, 1973- (author.).

Summary:

"The human brain’s ability to adapt has been an evolutionary advantage for the last 40,000 years, but now, for the first time in human history, we’re effectively living in two environments at once—the natural and the digital—and many of the traits that help us online don’t help us offline, and vice versa. Drawing on his experience of acclimating to a life of solitude in the woods and then to digital life upon his return to the city, Howard Axelrod explores the human brain’s impressive but indiscriminate ability to adapt to its surroundings. The Stars in Our Pockets is a portrait of, as well as a meditation on, what Axelrod comes to think of as “inner climate change.” Just as we’re losing diversity of plant and animal species due to the environmental crisis, so too are we losing the diversity and range of our minds due to changes in our cognitive environment."-- from publisher.