Superbloom

How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

Nicholas Carr

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Hardback

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English

Norton
28 January 2025

Society & Social Sciences; Media studies; Impact of science & technology on society; History of engineering & technology; Ethical & social aspects of computing; Digital lifestyle

From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

A celebrated commentator on the human consequences of technology, Nicholas Carr reorients the conversation around modern communication, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about self-expression, free speech, and media democratization. He reveals how messaging apps strip nuance from conversation, how ""digital crowding"" erodes empathy and triggers aggression, how online political debates narrow our minds and distort our perceptions, and how advances in AI are further blurring the already hazy line between fantasy and reality. Even as Carr shows how tech companies and their tools of connection have failed us, he forces us to confront inconvenient truths about our own nature. The human psyche, it turns out, is profoundly ill-suited to the ""superbloom"" of information that technology has unleashed.

With rich psychological insights and vivid examples drawn from history and science, Superbloom provides both a panoramic view of how media shapes society and an intimate examination of the fate of the self in a time of radical dislocation. It may be too late to change the system, Carr counsels, but it's not too late to change ourselves.

By: Nicholas Carr
Imprint: Norton
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 434g
ISBN: 9781324064619
ISBN 10: 1324064617
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 28 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and four other acclaimed books. A former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, he writes for the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.