How fully I recommend this book: 9/10
Lesson 1: The key to thriving in our high-tech world is to spend less time using tech.
Consider how several tech moguls limit their children’s access to tech. Much of modern tech inhibits what humans need to thrive: autonomy, deep relationships, concentration, meaning, etc.
Lesson 2: Modern technology is not neutral. It’s biased for profit.
A smartphone, social media, and other modern tech is not “neutral.” It is deliberately biased to get you hooked in particular ways for long periods of time so more money can be made off you.
Lesson 3: Our phones are not part of our bodies.
Part of what drives compulsive tech use is assuming that we must always have our phones on us.
To challenge this, we can choose to be physically removed from our phones as much as possible.
Lesson 4: Humans are not wired to be constantly wired.
We are not evolved to be in constant communication with an infinite number of people.
Modern digital communication tools can often feel like “social fast food.”
Lesson 5: Protect positive solitude.
Creativity, rest, thinking, learning, self-discovery, and more; all these things depend on solitude, which can now be eliminated with a quick glance toward a screen.
Let’s protect our solitude!
Lesson 6: Conversation over connection.
Connection (fully digital: all social media, texting) should ideally only serve to support conversation (human element: in-person, phone call, video call).
If we can’t ever have a real conversation with someone, they’re an acquaintance or connection, not a friend or close relationship.
Lesson 7: Reclaim your leisure!
1st: Decide how you truly want to live your life.
2nd: Create systems for your tech use so that tech companies, advertisers, or other distractions fail to claim your time and attention. Cut out anything that doesn’t add real value.
3rd: Live your best life in our strange world!
Lesson 8: The true cost of a thing.
Henry David Thoreau: “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
This serves to then ask: “What is the cost of my using this or that technology in this or that way?”