A bit overstated, but a clear warning against becoming someone who brings a smartphone to the dinner table.
A research psychologist argues that our overuse of technology and media is producing symptoms of serious psychological disorders.
An early student of how the Internet, mobile devices and other technologies affect human behavior, Rosen (Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, 2010, etc.) notes that many individuals now interact obsessively with technology, cannot be without their mobile devices and must use them during meals, for fear that they will miss something. This overreliance on gadgets and websites can lead to significant psychological problems, which the author calls an iDisorder. The new disorder combines elements of many psychiatric maladies and centers on our relationship technology. Much of his book consists of a discussion of common psychiatric disorders—e.g., communication disorders, ADHD, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, hypochondriasis, schizoaffective and schizotypal disorders, body dysmorphia, voyeurism and addiction) and the ways in which technology use either produces symptoms that match those of certain disorders or exacerbates already existing signs of a disorder. Often, the possible link between behavior and disorder is apparent: “all about me” rants on Facebook and narcissism, constant message-checking and obsessive-compulsive behavior, etc. Rosen draws on research, including his 2011 study of more than 750 individuals examining the level of a person’s psychological health and use of technology. The study found younger people were often “very anxious” in checking text messages, while few older people became anxious about their technologies. While aspects of iDisorder may affect any technology user, Rosen shows it is those who make compulsive, unusually frequent use of mobile and other devices who are most prone to adverse effects. He offers checklists to determine how technology is affecting you, and suggests balance and moderation in using gadgets.
A bit overstated, but a clear warning against becoming someone who brings a smartphone to the dinner table.Pub Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-230-11757-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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