Old-Thinker News | October 7, 2013
Update 1/4/18: Mainstream media is now picking up on societal trends discussed in The Age of Disconnection 5 years ago. Here are some recent headlines:
Bloomberg: “Kids Connecting on Social Media Are Less Satisfied With Real Life”
Wired: “Why Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore”
Daniel Taylor, independent activist, researcher and webmaster of oldthinkernews.com, is proud to release his new book The Age of Disconnection – We are more wired than ever. But are we truly connected?
From cell phones to Google Glass, and eventually brain chips, technology is increasingly playing a major role in our lives. Previously unheard of disorders are appearing parallel to these trends. “Digital dementia” is beginning to plague young people across the developed world. A “new social awkwardness” is gripping their lives. Recent films like “Don Jon” and “Her” are beginning to inject some of the issues raised in The Age of Disconnection into popular culture.
The Age of Disconnection explores these new social phenomena associated with our addiction to technology.
Buy The book here
Also available in E-Book format
The technological elite plan to make these individuals – who they see as a generation of “easily deceived barbarians” that are unfit for the future – and the rest of the human race, obsolete. Human connection is fading in the technological era while the age of robotics rapidly approaches.
In The Age of Disconnection, you will learn the secrets to staying truly connected in a wired world.
Excerpt from The Age of Disconnection:
“As a society we are increasingly finding ourselves in a passive observer mode. We watch what our friends are doing on our facebook feed, which, to our dismay, often makes us feel inadequate in comparison. We watch eagerly for the next viral video. We model ourselves after scripted characters on television instead of creating ourselves. What are you adding to the world? Turn the TV off for a while and re-discover the world around you. Let your thoughts (about yourself, others, and the world) be your own, not suggested by someone else. Own your consciousness.
What would happen if the internet and all of the devices that rely on it to function were to be shut off for a week? Outside of the economic impact, what would people feel like? Would we go into withdrawal like a hardcore cocaine addict? Do we still know what to do with our free time without it?
Technology (and how we use it) reveals the deeper things of the human soul.”
The Age of Disconnection is now available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and in E-book form. It is now available for purchase on Lulu.com.
internet is not about isolation, people talk to each other all the time. it might be about laziness, since we don’t have to get on the phone
or get off our asses to visit someone. or even go to work.
“the disease of isolation, is the most highly addictive we have ever encountered”
Ariel, that’s a very nice line and all the more reason to suffer its opposite in humility.
I’m sure the book will offer a few suggestions.
A very small truth can take down a big lie.
Thank you Daniel for such an important contribution to this emerging discussion about just how much our outsourcing of perception has been co-opted by our technology and its unseen puppet masters. I so much agree with and am immersed inside this struggle to stay in the driver’s seat and feed my consciousness with reality as it is, not as it appears or is supposed to be perceived. I have another angle to add: as a former substance abuse counselor, now elder single, low-income female living on the edges of homelessness, I especially feel the isolation we all swim in now. So many thinking people can see the path to how we got here (a high majority of older Americans are single and alienated from one another), but this predicament we are all in together - the disease of isolation, is the most highly addictive we have ever encountered. The problem is that for so many of us, the only social connection that allows us to make sense of it all - that validates our sanity in this insane world, that supports our efforts toward independent thought, happens through the Internet. I freeze in fear at the thought of this disappearing too. The vast majority of everyone around me labors under illusions about their government, world issues are distorted beyond belief, and even the normal healthy processing of one’s own life (the last big developmental-spiritual task of living/dying) is polluted by the lack of honesty our unreal world creates. In order to even sort out the damage done by our technology it requires a honed skill of self-scrutiny and moral responsibility which citizenship requires too. We need to be the leader in our own lives in order to lead others out of this mess. Human Beings have lost their ability to think, no longer know their own moral core, have little will or track record in changing, and for me, the thought of giving up the Internet where I can find and relate to people like you, would be the final straw in my existential survival plan.