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My first question on seeing this book was, is it going to be as successful and thought-provoking as Carr's previous book The Shallows? The answer is an unequivocal, "yes!"
If you've not read The Shallows I recommend that you consider reading it first because many of the thoughts and ideas from it are continued, developed and extended in The Glass Cage. It's not a necessary prerequisite but it would enhance your appreciation of Carr's arguments.
Carr's central thesis can be summed up in a quote often attributed to Marshall McLuhan, "we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."
Carr's point, which he develops with many intriguing examples ranging from airline pilots, through doctors, photographers, architects, and even to farmers, is that this Faustian pact with technology comes at a cost. The cost, in Carr's view, is a loss of direct, experiential, formative contact with our work. The consequences of this slow loss of familiarity and connection with our work are subtle, insidious and will only increase while we follow this technocentric approach to automation.
Carr is excellent at making his case. Most of his examples are familiar and those that less so, such as the automation of legal and medical opinions are interesting in that they affect us all.
I felt that where Carr was less strong was in proposing solutions to the problems he raises. He works hard at explaining an alternative vision calling on the poetry of Robert Frost's as a springboard to a more humanistic approach to developing tools, but it is hard work selling an alternative to the easy, convenient future that so many of us seem to crave.
Ultimately it may be that Carr's biggest contribution will not be to single-handedly derail the future that Google, Apple, and Amazon wish to sell us, an exceedingly unlikely outcome, but to at least make us aware that there is a choice that we are making when we choose the frictionless path to the future, and that we should carefully consider that choice before we make it.
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (September 29, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393240762
- ISBN-13: 978-0393240764
- Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 105 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#340,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #472 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #307 in Robotics & Automation (Books)
- #189 in Human-Computer Interaction (Books)
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