The Big Disconnect

Tablets, smart phones, and social networks all promise better opportunities to connect and stay connected. Yet what they really do is replace face-to-face interactions and disguise our growing inability to trust others. According to recent surveys, at any given moment, sixty million Americans—or 20 percent of the population—feel sufficiently isolated to report that loneliness is a major source of unhappiness. Have we arrived at a new kind of consciousness in which electronic interfaces receive most of our attention to the detriment of real interpersonal communication and empathy?
In The Big Disconnect, award-winning writer Giles Slade offers a bracing look at an America where intimacy with machines is increasingly replacing mutual human intimacy. In a sweeping overview that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the present, Slade reveals how consumer technologies changed from analgesic devices that ameliorated the loneliness of a newly urban generation in the Gilded Age to prosthetic machines that act as substitutes for companionship in contemporary America. Mining insights from neuroscience, the author delves deeply into the history of this transformation, showing why Americans use certain technologies to mediate their connections with other human beings instead of seeking out face-to-face contacts. In a final investigative section, Slade describes ways in which some people are bucking the trend by consciously including interpersonal strategies that build empathy, community, and mutual acceptance.
This masterful interdisciplinary synthesis provides many insights into our increasingly artificial relationships and a vision of how we can rediscover genuine community and human empathy.