In the 21st century, it’s rare to be unaccompanied by technology. Everywhere one looks, whether at a doctor’s waiting room or a Starbucks, someone will probably be glued to his/her smart phone. Can individuality be fostered underneath all of this technological stimulus? Is it possible to still be an individual in this day and age?
Matthew B. Crawford, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, seeks answers to those questions and examines technology’s impact on individuality in The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in An Age of Distraction (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
In the beginning of the book, Crawford discusses how he came up with the topic. While paying for groceries one day, he realized that once he swiped his credit card he was considered a captive audience while waiting to pay. He concluded that social technology could be considered intrusive advertising.
Using models drawn from philosophy and liberal education, Crawford sets up ways in which individuals can maintain themselves in an era of constant stimuli. Crawford argues that our attention span has gotten low because of the constant presence of technology. As a result, people engage less than we once did in everyday activities that structure our attention. Crawford’s goal is to arrive at an “ethics of attention…grounded in a realist’s account of the mind and critical gaze at modern culture.” Echoing novelist David Foster Wallace, he adds that being self-centered makes it hard to cope with life.
