Distraction: A Philosopher’s Guide to Being Free by Australian philosopher Damon Young (Melbourne University Publishing, 2008), may already be available in Australia but hasn’t made its way to the US yet. (Also a pre-order at amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.)
Book website is here, with links to reviews, an excerpt, and more.
Product Description
Exploring the nature of distraction, the popular philosophy surrounding it, and its role in modern life, this book surmises that distraction is often a matter of what one values. Written in a playful tone, this view analyzes important aspects of life, showing that technology, acquaintances, jobs, and addictions often waste time and energy. Through the history of popular philosophy, it is demonstrated that patient, sensitive, and thoughtful attention to the world suggests that the opposite of a life of distraction is one of grateful appreciation.
What time of year do teenage girls search for prom dresses online? How does the quick adoption of technology affect business success (and how is that related to corn farmers in Iowa)? How do time and money affect the gender of visitors to online dating sites? And how is the Internet itself affecting the way we experience the world? In Click, Bill Tancer takes us behind the scenes into the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth about how we use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information–and what all of that says about who we are.
As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we’ve come to rely tremendously on the Internet–leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life. Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.
The Walrus article concludes by citing recent research by Takahiko Masuda:
When presented with a smiling face against a background of contrary expressions, the Japanese, unlike the North Americans, had significant doubts about whether the face truly represented “happiness.” Much more than the North Americans, the Japanese took context into account and concluded that, despite the smiley face, an individual surrounded by unhappy people might not feel all that happy. Like the display rules Ekman had formulated from his own analysis of American and Japanese cultures, Masuda’s work points to what might be termed “context rules” that affect the actual experiencing of emotion.
“What was the first song that humans sang and why did music become an integral part of human life from the beginning? Levitin tells the story of the co-evolution of music and of the human brain, how each one influenced the development of the other over tens of thousands of years. An unprecedented blend of science and art, Daniel Levitin’s best-selling debut, This Is Your Brain on Music (translated into 8 languages), changed the way we think about how music gets in our heads. Now in what is being called a tour de force by leading scientists, he shows how six specific forms of music played a pivotal role in creating human culture and society as we know it. Levitin masterfully weaves together the story of human evolution, music, anthropology, psychology and biology from the dawn of homo sapiens to the present.”
It’s a little off topic, but I really enjoyed this video by Dr. Michael Wesch, which was recently presented at the Library of Congress (and a book does make a cameo appearance):
One wonderful moment is when a student holds a mirror up to her webcam, saying “this is what I’m talking to.”
See also Wesch’s Digital Ethnography blog for further discussion of concepts such as “aesthetic arrest” and “context collapse.”
