Caught in the Current
Searching for Simplicity in the Technological Age
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Science tells us what is. Technology tells us what can be. But neither can tell us what ought to be.
As a science and technology journalist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jay Bookman has witnessed some of the most remarkable and exciting advances in human history-supercomputers, cyborgs, genetic engineering. Like the rest of us, though, he has also watched as ever-more sophisticated tools intended to make our lives easier and less stressful have often done the opposite. The problem, he says, lies not in our tools, but in ourselves.
In Caught in the Current, Bookman and four friends embark on their annual rafting trip down the Deschutes River in central Oregon. Leaving cell phones, pagers, and laptops behind, they float for 60 miles through stark desert canyons, whitewater rapids and some of the best trout-fishing in America. But this is also a journey of another sort, an exploration of the many ways in which technology has altered how human beings experience each other and the world around them.
We live today in the most connected society in history, and yet our sense of isolation has never been more acute. We communicate megabytes of data, but somehow knowledge or wisdom still escape us. The cell phone is our tool, our servant, but it is also a barbaric interloper that we have not yet dared to tame.
In his finely tuned prose, Bookman contrasts the rhythm of life on the Deschutes with the increasingly fragmented and chaotic pace of our electronic age and reveals how the momentum of technology often breaks the flow of life. Our time is segmented into tasks to be completed; our personal interactions often take place behind a flashing cursor; our focus is "faster," not "better." Transfixed by the marvels of technology, we've overlooked its profound impact on our community.
Neither a technophobe nor Luddite, Bookman accepts that technological change is inevitable and desirable. But in Caught in the Current, he also warns that we should not become passive subjects of that change, allowing ourselves to be tossed like helpless driftwood in the current.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
To escape the shackles of cell phones, watches, computers and other such technological ubiquities, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bookman flees to where the"simplicity of the river is so reassuring." In an annual pilgrimage, he and a group friends head to Oregon's Deschutes River to raft, fish and breathe fresh air. Bookman describes yearning for a simpler journey--a more basic, albeit riskier, search for balance amid modern life's frenetic pace and its invisible, irrevocable bonds to technologies of growth and consumption."Because we were originally molded by a world of scarcity," he writes,"we aren't genetically prepared for a world of plenty." However, as Bookman and friends master--or almost master--icy rapids, endure scorching desert days and generally josh around, their need for modern life's refreshment becomes evident. The author muses lucidly on the fate of community in the face of the Web, cell networks and television satellites. Some of Bookman's examples of machines' unrelenting grasp are downright scary, such as the ongoing experiments in living a"cyborg" life, in which"electrodes attached directly into people's skulls allow them to operate a computer through mind control." Ultimately, Bookman, like others before him, contends that this artificial intelligence spells a spiraling doom."The modern predicament reminds me of those Chinese finger traps, the paper toys that grip you tighter the more you struggle to escape," he writes."The harder we fight for a sense of personal security and identity, insinuating new technologies into every aspect of our lives,...the less secure we actually feel."
