Digitopia: The Look of the New Digital You [Paperback]

Richard DeGrandpre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2001

The year is 2001. The internet has us swimming in information. New digital media like DVDs, MP3s, PlayStations, and DTVs are revolutionizing the entertainment industry. The e-economy has redefined the marketplace. E-books are now available at the click of a button. And life is... what? Faster? Better? Richer? Healthier? Happier?

Well if you're not exactly sure, don't be surprised. As Richard DeGrandpre spells out in this panoramic guide to the new electronic culture, all is not necessarily well in our emerging digital dreamworld. First and foremost, he explains, we are becoming digitally mastered. New digital portals are leading us into an ever more virtual reality, such that the images,rhythms, and moods of the digital environment are rapidly become the dominant images, rhythms, and moods of the mental environment. Digital technology is conditioning in us a growing desire for plugged-in worlds, he says, leaving us increasingly unsatisfied and frustrated in what's left of the unplugged world.

In twenty-five original and provocative essays, DeGrandpre questions whether we as individuals or as a society have adequately considered the implications of a fully-wired world, and finds considerable historical evidence that our digital culture will lead us to a time that has, literally, no place. The name of this placeless place is of course Digitopia.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Standing athwart post-history yelling "Stop," psychologist Richard DeGrandpre looks askance at the cultural impact of our technology in Digitopia: The Look of the New Digital You. Embracing McLuhan's analysis of media's transforming influence on our lives, he is suspicious of, if not exactly hostile toward, digital culture. It's a fairly conservative message coming from a lefty, but many of his arguments will hit home with all but the most libertarian reader. DeGrandpre's 25 essays are clever, well informed, and concise, though he's generally more concerned with scoring rhetorical points than illuminating his topics more broadly.

Still, it's important to hear all sides of any argument, even arguments that, like this one, are largely waged implicitly. The pro-tech case is simply the status quo, making collections like Digitopia vital for readers who prefer conscious and thoughtful analysis to careless acceptance. The broad scope DeGrandpre brings is refreshing--including information about teenage girls' body image, preliterate cultures, and Third World health care puts his rhetoric in context and may help convince a few readers that some effects of technology ought to be curbed before post-history leads to post-humanity. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

The advertising suggests that laptops and cell phones will give their users unadulterated freedom by letting them conduct business and trade stocks while sunning on the beach. But the ability to work or shop from home (or, even more insidiously, on vacation) means we are never free from the pressure to earn or spend money, observes DeGrandpre (Ritalin Nation). In this energetic book, he warns that new technologies will enslave rather than free us, and that the experience of being constantly "jacked in" keeps us dangerously alienated from the "here and now" and the mundane but often necessary experiences of everyday social interaction. Yet DeGrandpre does not indict laptops and DVDs per se; his target is what he calls the "digital ethos" our cultural consensus that faster is always better. For the many whose bodies and minds adapt all too easily to the rapid-fire changes in technological efficiency, he observes, there is a growing digital dependency. In effect, we become addicted to being hyperstimulated and constantly entertained. DeGrandpre's analysis of the generation gap between "wired" children and their "analog" parents is perhaps the most illuminating part of the book. At the same time, he cautions against the complacent fantasy that everyone else is a techno-slave while the reader is somehow free. While some of DeGrandpre's observations will be familiar to anyone who's ever sat on a crowded commuter train, last Christmas's lackluster techno-gadgets sales suggest that this book will find a sympathetic audience, though perhaps one more interested in the print edition than the electronic version.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: AtRandom (April 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812991567
• ISBN-13: 978-0812991567
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,421,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cool Book about the future today, August 9, 2001

By 

Elfi Jones (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digitopia: The Look of the New Digital You (Paperback)

I heard about this book a few weeks ago, as being one of the e-books converted to real books and checked it out. I suppose I would not have read it on a screen, but on paper it's great.