The Age of Distraction: Reading, Writing, and Politics in a High-Speed Networked Economy - Couverture rigide

Hassan, Robert

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1412843065 ISBN 13 : 9781412843065

Editeur : Routledge, 2011

Synopsis

Connections between time, technology, and the processes of reading and writing make clear the links between experiences of what appear to be quite different phenomena. Reading and writing have functioned together in a particular way to build the world as we have known it for three thousand years. These interacting processes have now been transformed at their core and are building a different world, one where certainties of the previous era are disappearing and being displaced by what the author sees as a chronic and pervasive mode of cognitive distraction.

Robert Hassan offers a perspective permeated by a sense of history, beginning with the invention of writing and the development of the skill of reading. Together with technological developments, these provide a unique view of the trajectory of modernity into late-modernity, and illustrate how the arc of progress has transformed. New modes of time, technology, and reading and writing are helping create a faster world where we know less about more--and forget what we know evermore quickly.

What is the "time" of a thought? Is it possible to measure thinking? Can we consider knowledge or information, or reading and writing, as having temporal "rhythms"? These are questions Hassan tries to answer. So unfamiliar are we to thinking in such terms that they sound impossible. To a significant degree, time, thinking, and many forms of knowledge are the fruits of subjective experience. We connect experiences at superficial levels, where people have different experiences that may be objectively the same, but our interpretations will always diverge in respect of the "reality" we confront. This intersection of philosophy and communication takes the reader into new realms of analysis.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Robert Hassan is senior research fellow in the culture and communication department at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Empires of Speed, The Information Society, and The New Media Theory Reader. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Cultural Politics, World Futures, and Southern Review.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1412843065
• ISBN 13: 9781412843065
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 238
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible