Author(s): Giles Slade

Current Affairs & Politics

This is a revealing expose of how our love affair with ever - new technologies has undermined interpersonal relationships. Tablets, smart phones, and social networks all promise better opportunities to connect and stay connected. Yet what they really do is replace face-to-face interactions and disguise our growing inability to trust others. Have we arrived at a new kind of consciousness in which electronic interfaces receive most of our attention to the detriment of real interpersonal communication and empathy? The "Big Disconnect" offers a bracing look at a world where intimacy with machines is increasingly replacing mutual human intimacy. In a sweeping overview that ranges from the 19th century to the present, it reveals how consumer technologies changed from analgesic devices that banished the loneliness of a newly urban generation in the Gilded Age to prosthetic machines that act as substitutes for companionship.