Keep Calm and Log On
Your Handbook for Surviving the Digital Revolution
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
How to survive the digital revolution without getting trampled: your guide to online mindfulness, digital self-empowerment, cybersecurity, creepy ads, trustworthy information, and more.
Feeling overwhelmed by an avalanche of online content? Anxious about identity theft? Unsettled by the proliferation of fake news? Welcome to the digital revolution. Wait—wasn't the digital revolution supposed to make our lives better? It was going to be fun and put the world at our fingertips. What happened? Keep Calm and Log On is a survival handbook that will help you achieve online mindfulness and overcome online helplessness—the feeling that tech is out of your control—with tips for handling cybersecurity, creepy ads, untrustworthy information, and much more.
Taking a cue from the famous World War II morale-boosting slogan (“Keep Calm and Carry On”), Gus Andrews shows us how to adapt the techniques our ancestors used to survive hard times, so we can live our best lives online. She explains why media and technology stress us out, and offers empowering tools for coping. Mindfulness practices can help us stay calm and conserve our attention purposefully. Andrews shares the secret of understanding our own opinions'' “family trees” in order to identify misleading “fake news.” She provides tools for unplugging occasionally, overcoming feelings that we are “bad at technology,” and taking charge of our security and privacy. Andrews explains how social media algorithms keep us from information we need and why “creepy ads” seem to follow us online. Most importantly, she urges us to work to rebuild the trust in our communities that the internet has broken.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though presented as a how-to manual on safe computer and smartphone use targeted to older, tech-phobic users, this essential crash course also has useful guidance on media literacy and critical thinking. Andrews, producer of the YouTube series The Media Show, believes that technological advances, combined with distrust in information and authorities, have overwhelmed users into a "learned helplessness" and made them more susceptible to manipulation. Discussing how to manage one's exposure to digital media and to meaningfully evaluate information, she uses photos from the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and other historical events as examples of times when communities had to pull together, as she believes everyone must do now in the face of technological change. There is practical, technical help in these pages about online privacy, with details on how to create strong passwords and interact with others safely online, as well as tools to help readers fact-check information encountered online and understand what kinds of intellectual authority professional qualifications do and don't confer. This should be required reading for both admitted luddites and longtime digital denizens.
Customer Reviews
A wonderful resource to get your digital life in order
I will admit that I am a bit biased about the author. She is my sister in law's oldest daughter. There are some things which I really dislike about the book. Two asides should point that out - in one of the latter chapters she describes the problems with local news and comments that a story about local media ignoring a city council giving tax breaks to a big box store (which will put a lot of local businesses out of business) - the assumption that big box stores are destructive of local economies is a highly questionable bit of ideology of the left. The biggest box store (AMAZON - which has been given lots of tax incentives) has been a lifesaver in this time of COVID. The assumption that a big box store is automatically bad is just plain silly. A second example is her biased view of net neutrality. Net Neutrality is one of those fights which I would describe as Kabuki politics. Everyone puts on their game face and then argues the issue in a stylized manner. Since Net Neutrality has been gone (2018) - average speeds on the net have gone up AND coverage has expanded. All the (IMHO) silly arguments for the policy do not seem to have held up - speeds have not been throttled and choice is up.
SO with those to quibbles why would I recommend this book so highly? Because it does two things very well. First, in a very short and readable format it explains all sorts of issues with the digital age that even someone like me (who is addicted to technology) can gain from. In 20 Chapters Andrews does a superb (YES SUPERB) job of explaining how the internet works and some options that any of us can consider to make their digital life more understandable and more importantly to get their lives in control on the net. But second, this is not just a book. Andrews has amassed a site with all sorts of resources to review on all the topics covered in the book. The site is well organized and informative - a resource that I expect to come back to frequently.
This is an enjoyable read that offers a good host of "scout" rules and at the same time offers a site which is useful.