The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

by Michael Harris

  Chatroulette, 167–68

  Chicago Sun-Times, 115

  children, 25–41, 45–48

  brains of, 36–40

  iPad and, 26–27, 45

  multitasking and, 27–28

  phones and, 28–30

  Chip Vivant, 61

  Chopra, Aneesh, 65

  Christian, Brian, 61

  Chunyun, 209

  Clay, Cynthia, 61

  Clementi, Tyler, 63, 67

  Cleverbot, 60

  clocks, 98–99, 204

  Cocteau, Jean, 17

  Computer Power and Human Reason (Weizenbaum), 188

  computers, 16–17, 29, 108, 120, 188

  empathy in, 61, 62, 67

  intelligence in, 56–57, 60, 65

  memory in, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154–56

  computing, affective, 61, 62, 67

  confessions, 54, 66, 70, 71

  Todd and, 50–52, 72

  Conquest of Happiness, The (Russell), 195

  continuous partial attention, 10

  conversation, 25, 39, 194

  Cooper, Anderson, 52, 63

  cortisol, 10

  CougarLife, 175

  Coupland, Douglas, 184–87, 194, 197

  Coursera, 95–96, 98, 100

  Cowan, Nelson, 154–55, 160

  cowbirds, 125

  Craigslist, 165, 167, 174

  Craven, Dave, 77–78

  Cruel Intentions (Valmont), 166

  Cult of the Amateur, The (Keen), 88

  Danielson, Dennis, 157–59

  Darwin, Charles, 41, 42

  data mining, 82

  Dateline, 52

  dating, 164–83

  Dawkins, Richard, 41, 42

  daydreaming, 8, 47–48, 194, 205

  De Beers, 101

  “Defend the Web” (Berners-Lee), 152n

  Dennett, Daniel, 41

  digital immigrants, 15–16, 205

  distraction, 30, 36, 113–17, 121, 124–28, 133, 135, 194

  Dinakar, Karthik, 62–67, 96

  D’Mello, Sidney, 129–30

  DragonLance series, 117

  dudesnude, 165

  Ebert, Roger, 115–18

  Economic Journal, 87

  education, 94, 96, 183

  Coursera, 95–96, 98, 100

  dematerialization of, 97

  massive open online courses, 95–98

  edX, 98

  18 Minutes (Bregman), 127

  Einstein, Albert, 151

  Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 12n, 83, 145n, 202

  Eliot, T. S., 75

  ELIZA, 57–59, 61, 108, 188

  Elon University, 40

  e-mail, 17, 19, 54, 106, 113–15, 118, 127–28, 156, 169

  Harris’s Analog August and, 190–92, 196–97

  emotion, 51, 54–56, 60–62, 66, 113, 186

  empathy, 30, 38, 67

  in computers, 61, 62, 67

  Encyclopædia Britannica, 74–75

  Enlightenment, 12, 83

  EstablishedMen, 175

  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 155–56

  Evans, James, 86

  evolution, 37, 41–43

  of technology, 43

  Facebook, 9, 19, 24, 31, 64n, 69, 71, 82, 149, 156, 168, 175

  activity feed on, 91

  moderation of, 63–64

  selfies on, 68

  surveillance and, 66n

  Todd and, 50

  facts, 141, 145

  Fadiman, Clifton, 75

  fame, 69–70

  Fast Company, 97, 191

  Feldman, Erica, 73–74, 79

  Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, 147

  Fernyhough, Charles, 154

  filter bubbles, 91

  Financial Times, 185

  Forbes, 90

  Forster, E. M., 106–7, 109

  4chan, 53–54

  Foursquare, 150–51

  Frankenstein (Shelley), 56

  Frankfurt, Harry G., 92

  Franklin, Benjamin, 192

  friends, 30–31

  Frind, Markus, 182–83

  Furbies, 29–30

  Füssel, Stephan, 103

  Gaddam, Sai, 173

  Gallup, 123

  genes, 41–43

  Gentile, Douglas, 118–21

  German Ideology, The (Marx), 12n

  Gleick, James, 137

  Globe and Mail, 81–82, 89

  glossary, 211–16

  Google, 3, 8, 18–19, 24, 33, 43, 49, 82, 96, 142, 185

  memory and, 143–47

  search results on, 85–86, 91

  Google AdSense, 85

  Google Books, 102–3

  Google Glass, 99–100

  Google Maps, 91

  Google Plus, 31

  Gopnik, Alison, 33–34

  Gould, Glenn, 200–201, 204

  GPS, 35, 59, 68, 171

  Greenfield, Susan, 20, 25

  Grindr, 165, 167, 171, 173–74, 176

  Guardian, 66n

  Gutenberg, Johannes, 11–13, 14, 16, 21, 34, 98

  Gutenberg Bible, 83, 103

  Gutenberg Galaxy, The (McLuhan), 179, 201

  Gutenberg Revolution, The (Man), 12n, 103

  GuySpy, 171, 172, 173

  Hangul, 12n

  Harari, Haim, 141

  Harry Potter series, 66n

  Hazlehurst, Ronnie, 74

  Heilman, James, 75–79

  Henry, William A., III, 84–85

  “He Poos Clouds” (Pallett), 164

  History of Reading, A (Manguel), 16, 117, 159

  Hollinghurst, Alan, 115

  Holmes, Sherlock, 147–48

  House at Pooh Corner, The (Milne), 93

  Hugo, Victor, 20–21

  “Idea of North, The” (Gould), 200–201

  In Defense of Elitism (Henry), 84–85

  Information, The (Gleick), 137

  information retrieval, 141–42

  Innis, Harold, 202

  In Search of Lost Time (Proust), 160

  Instagram, 19, 104, 149

  Internet, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26–27, 55, 69, 125, 126, 129, 141, 143, 145, 146, 187, 199, 205

  brain and, 37–38, 40, 142, 185

  going without, 185, 186, 189–97, 200, 208–9

  remembering life before, 7–8, 15–16, 21–22, 48, 55, 203

  Internship, The, 89

  iPad, 21, 31

  children and, 26–27, 45

  iPhone, see phones

  iPotty, 26

  iTunes, 89

  Jobs, Steve, 134

  Jones, Patrick, 152n

  Justification of Johann Gutenberg, The (Morrison), 12

  Kaiser Foundation, 27, 28n

  Kandel, Eric, 154

  Kaufman, Charlie, 155

  Keen, Andrew, 88

  Kelly, Kevin, 43

  Kierkegaard, Søren, 49

  Kinsey, Alfred, 173

  knowledge, 11–12, 75, 80, 82, 83, 86, 92, 94, 98, 141, 145–46

  Google Books and, 102–3

  Wikipedia and, 63, 78

  Koller, Daphne, 95

  Kranzberg, Melvin, 7

  Kundera, Milan, 184

  Lanier, Jaron, 85, 106–7, 189

  latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), 64–65

  Leonardo da Vinci, 56

  Lewis, R. W. B., 117

  LinkedIn, 175

  literacy, 13

  Loebner, Hugh, 60

  Loebner Prize, 60

  Long Now Foundation, 204

  “Look at ME,” 69

  love, 176, 177

  Luddites, 18, 207–8, 209

  Luther, Martin, 12, 20

  “Machine Stops, The” (Forster), 106–7, 109

  Maeterlinck, Maurice, 5

  magazines, 26–28, 45–46, 102

  Malaysia, 1–2, 19

  Man, John, 12n, 103

  Manguel, Alberto, 16–17, 117, 117n, 159

  Manhunt, 165

  maps, 35, 98

  Marx, Groucho, 17


  Marx, Karl, 12n

  massive open online courses (MOOCs), 95–98

  Matrix, The, 44–45

  McGraw, Phil, 63

  McLuhan, Marshall, 14, 34–35, 99, 179, 194, 201, 205

  memes, 41–43

  technology-based, 42–44

  memorization, 145, 151–52, 156–59

  memory, 32–33, 35, 40, 137–63

  of absence, 202–3

  brain and, 139, 140, 142, 146, 151–53, 155, 158

  computer, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154–56

  fear-based, 155–56

  Google and, 143–47

  group (transactive), 142–43

  method of loci and, 146–47, 148

  Molaison and, 138

  off-loaded, 140–43, 145, 151, 155

  of pre-Internet life, 7–8, 15–16, 21–22, 48, 55, 203

  reconsolidation and, 154, 155

  search engines and, 142–43, 146

  Timehop and, 148–51, 160

  memory palace, 146–47

  Mesopotamia, 81

  Microsoft, 64n

  Bing, 62

  Windows, 43

  Miller, Geoffrey, 105

  Milne, A. A., 93

  Milner, Brenda, 138–39

  Milton, John, 133–36, 157–58

  MIT, 30, 55, 57, 59, 61

  Media Lab, 62, 63, 67

  Molaison, Henry, 137–39, 152

  Montaigne, Michel de, 12n, 48

  Morozov, Evgeny, 55

  Morrison, Blake, 12

  Most Human Human, The (Christian), 61

  movies, 101

  multitasking, 31, 119–20, 127

  brain and, 119, 121

  children and, 27–28

  Mumford, Lewis, 141

  Myth of the Machine, The (Mumford), 141

  Nader, Karim, 155, 160

  National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 123

  National Helpline, 65

  National Science Foundation, 39

  nature vs. nurture argument, 37

  Neruda, Pablo, 178

  Net Delusion, The (Morozov), 55

  Netflix, 85, 89, 96

  neuroplasticity, 36–38, 47, 141, 159, 193

  newspapers, 28, 194

  correspondence columns in, 83

  Newton, Isaac, 83

  New Yorker, 52, 92

  New York Times, 20, 21, 25

  Ng, Andrew, 94–98

  Nielsen Media Research, 23, 28

  “Night Mail” (Auden), 113–14

  1984 (Orwell), 40–41

  Notre-Dame de Paris (Hugo), 20–21

  Ogas, Ogi, 173

  On Bullshit (Frankfurt), 92

  operant conditioning, 114

  Operation Match, 170

  opinion, 81, 86, 88, 90–93

  “IMHO” and, 92

  reviews, 81–84, 87–90, 92–93

  scarcity of, 84

  orienting responses, 120, 121, 125

  Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 41

  Orwell, George, 40–41

  Pallett, Owen, 164

  Paradise Lost (Milton), 136, 157–58

  Pariser, Eli, 91

  Parker, Dorothy, 92–93

  Paro, 104

  personalization, 91, 96

  Peter the Great, 147

  Pew Internet and American Life Project, 40

  Pew Research Center, 97, 123, 168

  Phaedrus (Plato), 32–33

  phones, 17, 19, 22–24, 29–32, 54, 100, 202

  children and, 28–30

  Harris’s Analog August and, 190–91, 194

  texting on, 28, 30–31, 35–36, 100, 169, 192–94

  Picasso, Pablo, 17

  Plato, 32–33, 45n, 202

  PlentyofFish, 177–79, 181–83

  poetry, 12

  pornography, 83, 88, 168, 169, 174

  Postal, 89

  Postman, Neil, 98, 188, 208

  post-traumatic stress, 155–56

  Pound, Ezra, 209

  Powers, William, 192

  Prelude, The (Wordsworth), 111

  Price, Susan, 40

  printing press, 11–13, 16, 20–21, 33–34, 43, 83, 98, 145n, 202

  Printing Press as an Agent of Change, The (Eisenstein), 12n

  Project TACT, 169–71

  Proust, Marcel, 159–61

  psychiatry and psychology, 65, 96

  Pygmalion (Shaw), 57

  Qpid, 180

  Qrushr Girls, 173

  Quadratus, Satellius, 144

  Quiet (Cain), 204

  radio, 7, 17, 31, 205

  railroads, 200–202

  Raonic, Milos, 129

  Raytheon, 66n

  reading, 34, 115–18, 123

  brain and, 33–34

  Milton and, 133, 135

  online, 130–31

  of War and Peace, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122–26, 128–29, 131–33, 135, 136

  see also books

  relationships, 164–83

  reviews, 81–84, 87–90, 92–93

  rewards, 114

  Riley, Pete, 107

  Rilke, Rainer Maria, 80

  Riot, 66n

  Robertson, Ian, 141

  robots, 29–30, 56–57

  Rogen, Seth, 192

  Roman, Elias, 90–91

  Rose, Jonathan, 81

  Ross, Robert, 169–70

  Rotten Tomatoes, 89, 90

  Rowling, J. K., 66n

  Royal College of Engineering, 107

  R.U.R. (Capek), 56–57

  Russell, Bertrand, 195

  Sabinus, Calvisius, 143–45

  Sas, Corina, 156

  Science, 142

  Scoville, William Beecher, 138

  search engines, 142–43, 146

  Second Life, 104

  Seed, 105

  Seife, Charles, 145, 146

  Sejong, 12n

  self-documentation, 68–71

  selfies, 68

  Seneca, 118, 143–44, 203–4

  senses, 161, 179, 205

  synesthesia and, 62–63