Synopses & Reviews
In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.
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"Nicholas Carr is among the most lucid, thoughtful, and necessary thinkers alive. He's also terrific company. should be required reading for everyone with a phone." Jonathan Safran Foer
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"Engaging, informative ...Carr deftly incorporates hard research and historical developments with philosophy and prose to depict how technology is changing the way we live our lives." Publishers Weekly
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"Most of us, myself included, are too busy tweeting to notice our march into technological dehumanization. Nicholas Carr applies the brakes for us (and our self-driving cars)." Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
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"Carr brilliantly and scrupulously explores all the psychological and economic angles of our increasingly problematic reliance on machinery and microchips to manage almost every aspect of our lives. A must-read for software engineers and technology experts in all corners of industry as well as everyone who finds himself or herself increasingly dependent on and addicted to gadgets." Booklist, Starred Review
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"Fresh and powerful." Mark Bauerlein
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"Nick Carr is the rare thinker who understands that technological progress is both essential and worrying. is a call for technology that complements our human capabilities, rather than replacing them." Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus
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"A sobering new analysis of the hazards of intelligent technology." Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus
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"A stimulating, absorbing read." Hiawatha Bray Boston Globe
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"An elegantly written history of what role robotics have played in our past, and the possible role that they may play in our future... urges us to take a moment, to take stock, and to realize the price that we're paying--if not right this second, then certainly at some point in the future--in order to live a life that's made easier by technology." Michelle Scheraga Associated Press
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"Helps us appreciate why so-called gains of 'superior results' can come with a steep price of hard-to-see tradeoffs that are no less potent for being subtle and nuanced." Elisabeth Donnelly Flavorwire
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"[A] deeply informed reflection on computer automation." Evan Seliger Forbes Magazine
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"Smart, insightful... paint[s] a portrait of a world readily handing itself over to intelligent devices." G. Pascal Zachary San Francisco Chronicle
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"Brings a much-needed humanistic perspective to the wider issues of automation." Jacob Axelrad Christian Science Monitor
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"One of Carr's great strengths as a critic is the measured calm of his approach to his material--a rare thing in debates over technology... Carr excels at exploring these gray areas and illuminating for readers the intangible things we are losing by automating our lives." Richard Waters Financial Times
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"Carr's prose is elegant, and he has an exceptional command of the facts. He serves a varied menu of the ways that technology has failed us, and in every instance he is not only persuasive but undoubtedly right." Daniel Levitin
Synopsis
At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.
About the Author
Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as The Big Switch and Does IT Matter? His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and the New Republic, and he writes the widely read blog Rough Type. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and an executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.