The Glass Cage

Automation and Us

By: Nicholas Carr

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.

In The Glass Cage, bestselling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.

Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.

From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.

With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.

©2014 Nicholas Carr (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Fantastic book!!

I don't regret getting this book one bit! It's quite an interesting listen, whether you agree or disagree with the message it's trying to deliver.

I highly recommend it!

Timely

I'm sure after the revelations of NSA monitoring this book would have taken a different turn, but it pursued the question of where does technology and the best human existence come together. this book was challenging but not intentionally negative. I'm going to happily share it with others.

Cautionary tale of how humans might just get what they want and be poorer for it

A thoughtful and provocative book.

I was on my way to buying a Tesla self driving car. Now I think I will opt for a manual shift vehicle instead!

Seriously though, I have stopped using GPS and i'm happily figuring out how to get to places again. I did not realize how automation was deskilling me in various ways.

I I highly recommend this book.

More poetry than science

Beautifully written narrative with many meaningful reflections and human interest stories. However, it seems to me Nicholas Carr forgot to explore how evolutionary neuroscience reveals much about our automation of both our construction of reality and perception of it. Continuous mechanization and automation is what evolutionary biology does. Now, with our information technologies, we can do it consciously OR unconsciously. Our choice. Although dualism, where Carr seems to have hung his hat, has offered us much, the quest for a unitary physicalism has given us science.

start with The Shallows instead

not as engrossing or engaging as The Shallows was, which spent more time addressing neuroscience and human behavior. this is more focused on the tech perspective first and really only breezes over the actual science used to study AI.

nonetheless, Carr is great at making the case for critical thinking about humans and their relationship to technology.

so if you like The Shallows, this will be a great extension of that book.