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The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age
What shapes our sense of place, our sense of time, and our memory? How is technology changing the way we make sense of the world and of ourselves?
Our screens offer us connection, especially now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are certain depths of connection our screens can’t offer—to ourselves, to the natural world, and to each other. In this personal exploration of digital life’s impact on how we see the world, Howard Axelrod marshals science, philosophy, art criticism, pop culture, and his own experience of returning from two years of living in solitude in northern Vermont. The Stars in Our Pockets is a timely reminder of the world around us and the worlds within us—and how, as alienated as we may sometimes feel, they were made for each other.
Our screens offer us connection, especially now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are certain depths of connection our screens can’t offer—to ourselves, to the natural world, and to each other. In this personal exploration of digital life’s impact on how we see the world, Howard Axelrod marshals science, philosophy, art criticism, pop culture, and his own experience of returning from two years of living in solitude in northern Vermont. The Stars in Our Pockets is a timely reminder of the world around us and the worlds within us—and how, as alienated as we may sometimes feel, they were made for each other.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2020
21 people are currently reading
1415 people want to read
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July 28, 2020
It’s been months since I read this and I am still thinking about it. So it seems like not only do I need to write a review, I need to actually buy a copy to support this extremely underrated book!
First off, Howard Axelrod seems fascinating in the most non-flashy way. He lived a year or two basically in solitude--no technology, little human contact and wrote about it in a book called The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude (which I need to read!) and teaches creative writing. Just the way he writes about and views the world feels rare, calming, and refreshing. Take this recent piece he did about how he relates this time of solitude to the current pandemic: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opini...
He just seems like a guy I would like to know.
The book is about how technology and always being “reachable” affects different human traits like curiosity, attention span, etc. If you are familiar with any of my reviews, you might know I have gone on technology rants in other reviews before (Touch and The Circle among others). Yeah, I realize the irony of having a technology rant on a website. While this book focuses on the digital age like Touch and The Circle, this book does something none of the other books do. Rather than just being a screed on the woes of technology (which, I’d also be here for), Axelrod’s writing blends science, nature, the arts, politics, history, personal anecdotes, and more to focus not only on what technology and connection is in our lives, but what truly makes us human. Clearly he is not big into tech or being “connected” all the time. But to me, he doesn’t come off as bitter about it but rather as a thoughtful person who is turning it over in his mind and wondering what the modern world is all about. The book teaches you, stretches your mind and challenges you, but it also manages to feel comforting and calming.
Most other reviews I’ve read are glowing but I will say there is a one star review by the user Kogiopis (sorry, I have no clue how to tag reviews) that I thought had a lot of good points on the opposing end. The review talks about how this is Axelrod’s very specific view of the world. He may not be relatable or worth listening to for many people because he uses way less tech than the average person.He doesn’t go in depth about any products, the science behind them, or include many pros along with his cons. He can definitely be seen as an outsider scoffing at us. I don’t mean it as an insult---but he is willfully ignorant. All this is true. Buuuuuut I kinda respect the persistence it takes for him to resist the technological world in this day and age. I remember getting texting 2-3 years later than basically everyone I knew and the shock and confusion I was treated with that it wasn’t a priority for me at the time. Eventually, we all cave to the norms. I definitely get these points, but I also feel like we know from the beginning he approaches life in a different way. To me, it’s the fact that he lives as an outsider to some extent and still seems content, happy, and accepted that makes the book so interesting. I also don’t think he means for his experience to be one size fits all--we don’t all need to retreat to the woods and live like monks. We all have different wants and needs from tech. But it’s worth considering evaluating the role tech has in our lives, what qualities we want to protect, and what--if anything---we need to change.
This review also argues that the internet also has done so much to connect people, especially for marginalized populations and in the time of Covid. Again, I definitely can’t argue with this. But I also feel like sometimes social media gives us a false sense of connection when we may be lacking real life relationships, which I think are irreplaceable.
As usual, when I don’t feel like my gushing about a book does the trick, I share some of my favorite parts. I had like ten pages marked and it was really hard to narrow down.
“There was thin smoke, an acrid smell. Large shards and fluids of various kinds made a strange geography between our cars. She could walk. I could walk. That was all I noticed at first. Then I noticed the parked cars: on both side of the street she’s shot out from, they faced the opposite direction…….”There was no stop sign,” the young woman said. She pointed to the corner. “See, there was no stop sign.” My voice felt far away, as though it had kept traveling without me. I tried to explain that she’d come down a one-way street the wrong way, that stop signs aren’t posted facing away from the direction cars are supposed to travel…….The fireman came, we answered questions. The policemen came, we answered questions. She doubled down: ‘I’m going to sue Google. Why isn’t there a stop sign?” The fireman swept the detritus, sprinkled down the fluids. The whole time, she didn’t let go of her phone. That’s where the story was. The one-way street, our mangled cars, her stiff neck, which she absently rubbed-----they weren’t as real as what was on her screen.”
“What worries me is not the computers-go-bad/conspire/take-over-the-world scenario; it’s not even the people-designing-them-go-bad/conspire/take-over-the-world scenario. It’s simply the we-no-longer-have-the-patience-to-pay-attention-to-the-word scenario, which includes, as dystopian sequels, the we-no-longer-pay-attention-to-each-other scenario and the we-no-longer-share-our-vulnerabilities-and-never-want-to-deal-with-anyone’s-vulnerabilitie scenario. What worries me, ultimately, is that we won’t love. Not the world around us, not each other. We won’t need to. Why wait for a deer, of any kind, to come bounding out of the trees?
First off, Howard Axelrod seems fascinating in the most non-flashy way. He lived a year or two basically in solitude--no technology, little human contact and wrote about it in a book called The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude (which I need to read!) and teaches creative writing. Just the way he writes about and views the world feels rare, calming, and refreshing. Take this recent piece he did about how he relates this time of solitude to the current pandemic: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opini...
He just seems like a guy I would like to know.
The book is about how technology and always being “reachable” affects different human traits like curiosity, attention span, etc. If you are familiar with any of my reviews, you might know I have gone on technology rants in other reviews before (Touch and The Circle among others). Yeah, I realize the irony of having a technology rant on a website. While this book focuses on the digital age like Touch and The Circle, this book does something none of the other books do. Rather than just being a screed on the woes of technology (which, I’d also be here for), Axelrod’s writing blends science, nature, the arts, politics, history, personal anecdotes, and more to focus not only on what technology and connection is in our lives, but what truly makes us human. Clearly he is not big into tech or being “connected” all the time. But to me, he doesn’t come off as bitter about it but rather as a thoughtful person who is turning it over in his mind and wondering what the modern world is all about. The book teaches you, stretches your mind and challenges you, but it also manages to feel comforting and calming.
Most other reviews I’ve read are glowing but I will say there is a one star review by the user Kogiopis (sorry, I have no clue how to tag reviews) that I thought had a lot of good points on the opposing end. The review talks about how this is Axelrod’s very specific view of the world. He may not be relatable or worth listening to for many people because he uses way less tech than the average person.He doesn’t go in depth about any products, the science behind them, or include many pros along with his cons. He can definitely be seen as an outsider scoffing at us. I don’t mean it as an insult---but he is willfully ignorant. All this is true. Buuuuuut I kinda respect the persistence it takes for him to resist the technological world in this day and age. I remember getting texting 2-3 years later than basically everyone I knew and the shock and confusion I was treated with that it wasn’t a priority for me at the time. Eventually, we all cave to the norms. I definitely get these points, but I also feel like we know from the beginning he approaches life in a different way. To me, it’s the fact that he lives as an outsider to some extent and still seems content, happy, and accepted that makes the book so interesting. I also don’t think he means for his experience to be one size fits all--we don’t all need to retreat to the woods and live like monks. We all have different wants and needs from tech. But it’s worth considering evaluating the role tech has in our lives, what qualities we want to protect, and what--if anything---we need to change.
This review also argues that the internet also has done so much to connect people, especially for marginalized populations and in the time of Covid. Again, I definitely can’t argue with this. But I also feel like sometimes social media gives us a false sense of connection when we may be lacking real life relationships, which I think are irreplaceable.
As usual, when I don’t feel like my gushing about a book does the trick, I share some of my favorite parts. I had like ten pages marked and it was really hard to narrow down.
“There was thin smoke, an acrid smell. Large shards and fluids of various kinds made a strange geography between our cars. She could walk. I could walk. That was all I noticed at first. Then I noticed the parked cars: on both side of the street she’s shot out from, they faced the opposite direction…….”There was no stop sign,” the young woman said. She pointed to the corner. “See, there was no stop sign.” My voice felt far away, as though it had kept traveling without me. I tried to explain that she’d come down a one-way street the wrong way, that stop signs aren’t posted facing away from the direction cars are supposed to travel…….The fireman came, we answered questions. The policemen came, we answered questions. She doubled down: ‘I’m going to sue Google. Why isn’t there a stop sign?” The fireman swept the detritus, sprinkled down the fluids. The whole time, she didn’t let go of her phone. That’s where the story was. The one-way street, our mangled cars, her stiff neck, which she absently rubbed-----they weren’t as real as what was on her screen.”
“What worries me is not the computers-go-bad/conspire/take-over-the-world scenario; it’s not even the people-designing-them-go-bad/conspire/take-over-the-world scenario. It’s simply the we-no-longer-have-the-patience-to-pay-attention-to-the-word scenario, which includes, as dystopian sequels, the we-no-longer-pay-attention-to-each-other scenario and the we-no-longer-share-our-vulnerabilities-and-never-want-to-deal-with-anyone’s-vulnerabilitie scenario. What worries me, ultimately, is that we won’t love. Not the world around us, not each other. We won’t need to. Why wait for a deer, of any kind, to come bounding out of the trees?
May 21, 2020
If there is one thing I can say of this book, it's this: it did, indeed, get me thinking... just not in the way Axelrod perhaps expected.
To give credit where credit is due, Axelrod is very up-front in the introduction about the fact that this book will not be universally applicable. He describes it as a "personal map" of traits he worries about losing in the digital age, and personal it most certainly is, in large part because of his own unique relationship with technology. One of the touchstones of this book and, it seems, his life, is his loss of vision in one eye and subsequent decision to spend two years in rural Vermont doing some serious introspection. (The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude) Where that intersects with the digital world is this: those two years occurred during a time of rapid technological development, meaning that while Axelrod was estranged from technology, it moved on without him and he came back to a vastly different world.
And this, in retrospect, is where I think this book started to lose me, because for all that he's written about the impact of the digital world... Axelrod feels very much like a stranger to it. As another review points out, he doesn't have a social media presence - and while there's nothing wrong with that, per se, it is emblematic of one of the difficulties of this book. Axelrod writes about the digital age from the perspective of someone who barely participates in it, who indeed seems to actively shun it, and again, that's a valid personal choice, but an authority on virtuality he is not.
There's also something very interesting about reading this book now. You see, like every other writer who expresses deep concern over how cell phones are changing our relationships to each other, Axelrod presents an image of two people, physically in proximity, but both absorbed in their phones such that they aren't 'in the moment' with one another. And yet, as I read that chapter, my state and much of the world were under shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of a global pandemic, with technology as our primary means of reaching out to family and friends without literally putting lives at risk. As someone who is both queer and socially anxious, I have always found this 'we're not talking to each other anymore!' argument to be disingenuous - the internet is often a literal lifeline for young queer people who are geographically or socially isolated, and I've formed or strengthened many a great friendship online. Now, in light of COVID-19, when being able to reach out regardless of distance is more important than ever... can we finally put this talking point to rest?
The thing that irritated me most, however, was Axelrod's chapter on wonder (titled 'Frames'). The following excerpt explains things rather well:
Because in these two paragraphs, Axelrod is not just disparaging Google... he's disparaging the entire undertaking of science, which is all about turning wondering into knowing into more wondering. The unknowable and the known aren't discrete categories; there is always interplay between what we already know and what we wonder about, and that's why scientific inquiry exists. That is why any inquiry exists! And having the knowledge of the world at our fingertips only expands our capacity to wonder at it, because each new answer raises new questions in turn. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable, as Axelrod clearly is, in not knowing, but the sheer patronizing tone of the above paragraphs, treating not knowing like some kind of Platonic ideal, is incredibly galling.
Ultimately, this book felt like pure navel-gazing. Axelrod does not have much direct experience with the digital world, so he puts forth conjecture. He speculates about the interior life of high school students who have grown up with it, but never bothers to actually ask them about it, never treats their perspectives as equally valid to his own. Despite the nearly 20 years which have passed since his return from the wilderness into the technological world, he puts himself forth as if he has not adjusted or tried to understand the new reality whatsoever, and with that much time elapsed it just seems like willful ignorance. (A prime example is the following aside in the last chapter, which demonstrates a staggering lack of understanding of search engines: "Modern footnote: A Google search for "pause for humility" gets a little less than two million results; a Google search for "rush to anger' gets over twenty-seven million, with videos of Rush Limbaugh topping the list." Gee, I wonder if that might have something to do with the fact that Rush is the man's name, or with the fact that 'pause for humility' isn't actually a commonly used phrase?)
If you are interested, for whatever reason, in Howard Axelrod's extremely specific view of the world, this book will impart plenty of information about Howard Axelrod's extremely specific view of the world. If you, like me, were looking for a nuanced reflection about our complex relationship with technology, you will probably not find it in a book explicitly structured around "endangered traits [Axelrod] fear[s] losing".
Honestly, looking back on that introduction, I don't know why I'm surprised that this turned out to be almost pure technophobia. Oh well.
p.s. please do yourself a favor and look at Goodreads' "Readers Also Enjoyed" list for this book. It's hilarious right now.
To give credit where credit is due, Axelrod is very up-front in the introduction about the fact that this book will not be universally applicable. He describes it as a "personal map" of traits he worries about losing in the digital age, and personal it most certainly is, in large part because of his own unique relationship with technology. One of the touchstones of this book and, it seems, his life, is his loss of vision in one eye and subsequent decision to spend two years in rural Vermont doing some serious introspection. (The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude) Where that intersects with the digital world is this: those two years occurred during a time of rapid technological development, meaning that while Axelrod was estranged from technology, it moved on without him and he came back to a vastly different world.
And this, in retrospect, is where I think this book started to lose me, because for all that he's written about the impact of the digital world... Axelrod feels very much like a stranger to it. As another review points out, he doesn't have a social media presence - and while there's nothing wrong with that, per se, it is emblematic of one of the difficulties of this book. Axelrod writes about the digital age from the perspective of someone who barely participates in it, who indeed seems to actively shun it, and again, that's a valid personal choice, but an authority on virtuality he is not.
There's also something very interesting about reading this book now. You see, like every other writer who expresses deep concern over how cell phones are changing our relationships to each other, Axelrod presents an image of two people, physically in proximity, but both absorbed in their phones such that they aren't 'in the moment' with one another. And yet, as I read that chapter, my state and much of the world were under shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of a global pandemic, with technology as our primary means of reaching out to family and friends without literally putting lives at risk. As someone who is both queer and socially anxious, I have always found this 'we're not talking to each other anymore!' argument to be disingenuous - the internet is often a literal lifeline for young queer people who are geographically or socially isolated, and I've formed or strengthened many a great friendship online. Now, in light of COVID-19, when being able to reach out regardless of distance is more important than ever... can we finally put this talking point to rest?
The thing that irritated me most, however, was Axelrod's chapter on wonder (titled 'Frames'). The following excerpt explains things rather well:
Real wonder tends to come, even for adults, when the unknowable flashes through the known - the mystery of our place in the universe made tangible in a meteor shower, or a sudden silence in the trees that seems to let us in, or even in a grasshopper. But Google makes everything appear fully knowable, indeed already fully known, so all we need to know is reference and cross-reference intelligently and efficiently.
Wonder is in your hands! Wonder isn't a potent mind/body swirl of curiosity and awe. Wonder doesn't take time, or have anything to do with the unknowable, or grace you with the humility to kneel down in the grass. Wonder is control. Wonder is over twenty-four million results for praying mantis in under .5 seconds. Wonder is the answer, not the question, and not the questioning.
Because in these two paragraphs, Axelrod is not just disparaging Google... he's disparaging the entire undertaking of science, which is all about turning wondering into knowing into more wondering. The unknowable and the known aren't discrete categories; there is always interplay between what we already know and what we wonder about, and that's why scientific inquiry exists. That is why any inquiry exists! And having the knowledge of the world at our fingertips only expands our capacity to wonder at it, because each new answer raises new questions in turn. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable, as Axelrod clearly is, in not knowing, but the sheer patronizing tone of the above paragraphs, treating not knowing like some kind of Platonic ideal, is incredibly galling.
Ultimately, this book felt like pure navel-gazing. Axelrod does not have much direct experience with the digital world, so he puts forth conjecture. He speculates about the interior life of high school students who have grown up with it, but never bothers to actually ask them about it, never treats their perspectives as equally valid to his own. Despite the nearly 20 years which have passed since his return from the wilderness into the technological world, he puts himself forth as if he has not adjusted or tried to understand the new reality whatsoever, and with that much time elapsed it just seems like willful ignorance. (A prime example is the following aside in the last chapter, which demonstrates a staggering lack of understanding of search engines: "Modern footnote: A Google search for "pause for humility" gets a little less than two million results; a Google search for "rush to anger' gets over twenty-seven million, with videos of Rush Limbaugh topping the list." Gee, I wonder if that might have something to do with the fact that Rush is the man's name, or with the fact that 'pause for humility' isn't actually a commonly used phrase?)
If you are interested, for whatever reason, in Howard Axelrod's extremely specific view of the world, this book will impart plenty of information about Howard Axelrod's extremely specific view of the world. If you, like me, were looking for a nuanced reflection about our complex relationship with technology, you will probably not find it in a book explicitly structured around "endangered traits [Axelrod] fear[s] losing".
Honestly, looking back on that introduction, I don't know why I'm surprised that this turned out to be almost pure technophobia. Oh well.
p.s. please do yourself a favor and look at Goodreads' "Readers Also Enjoyed" list for this book. It's hilarious right now.
February 19, 2020
My review for the Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...
Often, after I finish reading a book that I admire, I’ll snap a photograph of the cover and tweet a recommendation, tagging the author. When I completed “The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age,” though, I could not do so because the author, Howard Axelrod, adheres to his own convictions and does not participate on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any other such platform.
Advisedly, I do not say that Axelrod, a faculty member at Loyola University Chicago, practices what he preaches; for despite his brief and bracing book’s decidedly critical stance on technology, his tone is not a preachy one. Instead, his take tends more toward the poetic, as when he writes of how the spread of cellphones leads to the sensation of every public space becoming “a version of a ghost town, inhabited by people who were there but who also weren’t.”
His previous book, “The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude,” gave an account of his Thoreau-style time alone in the woods of Vermont in the wake of losing the sight in one eye in a pickup basketball accident during his undergraduate years at Harvard University. There in his cabin, he had “no TV, no cell phone, and no computer,” but not out of any Luddite resistance. Rather, he sought — in his state of partial blindness — to explore “how the world entered me and how I entered the world.” Upon his return to Boston in 2001, he finds “the sidewalk had changed” because “cell-phone use had doubled in the two years” he spent away.
Of course, 19 years after that, everyone knows that the smartphone-fueled states of public distractedness, news-based anxiety, and shrinking attention spans have only deepened. As Axelrod notes, not without dismay, “the signs are everywhere” in that the capacity for empathy is “down 40 percent in college students over the past 20 years,” we have an “inability to be alone (six minutes without a phone and subjects chose to receive electroshocks rather than confront ‘solitude’),” and “in the U.S. people swipe or tap an average of 2,617 times a day.”
Fortunately, this book — continuing some of the ruminations he began in his previous one — is neither a screed nor a jeremiad; He’s not some “Walden”-type neckbeard screaming at Silicon Valley to get off his lawn. Lyrical and nonlinear, blending such scientific concepts as “neural Darwinism” and route knowledge versus survey knowledge with astute personal observations and witty anecdotes, Axelrod examines how the supreme adaptability of the human brain can be both a bug and a feature, depending on what it happens to be adapting to.
Coining the term “inner climate change” to describe the threats the digital world poses to our physical, emotional and spiritual ones, Axelrod organizes the book’s six chapters around the various endangered traits he most fears humanity surrendering to the machines. These qualities include everything from firsthand experience to curiosity to the ability to get lost in a true flow state to wonder itself.
“Wonder Google-style bypasses personal experience, bypasses how our memories are imperfect in personal and even wondrous ways,” he writes of a phone conversation with an old friend, reminiscing about such 1980s coming of age movies as “St. Elmo’s Fire.” “I didn’t really care about the full cast list. I cared about what each of us did or didn’t remember, and how browsing those memories could be like flipping through a photo album of our high school minds.”
Timely, essential, generous and never bitter, assembled with the roving structure of a book-length essay, “The Stars in Our Pockets” is not just a gentle exploration of the costs of living digitally; it is also a subtly prescriptive look at benefits of unplugging.
With examples from William James, Mary Oliver, Virginia Woolf, Oliver Sacks, Hannah Arendt and many more woven alongside his own, Axelrod offers a measured but urgent argument that “the portals in our pockets” are “ too good at responding to our immediate needs, too efficient at doing our bidding, for us to be getting lost in something larger than ourselves.”
Put down your phone and read this book. Maybe even get your friends to read it, too, and then have the kinds of conversations about it that can’t be had on social media.
Often, after I finish reading a book that I admire, I’ll snap a photograph of the cover and tweet a recommendation, tagging the author. When I completed “The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age,” though, I could not do so because the author, Howard Axelrod, adheres to his own convictions and does not participate on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any other such platform.
Advisedly, I do not say that Axelrod, a faculty member at Loyola University Chicago, practices what he preaches; for despite his brief and bracing book’s decidedly critical stance on technology, his tone is not a preachy one. Instead, his take tends more toward the poetic, as when he writes of how the spread of cellphones leads to the sensation of every public space becoming “a version of a ghost town, inhabited by people who were there but who also weren’t.”
His previous book, “The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude,” gave an account of his Thoreau-style time alone in the woods of Vermont in the wake of losing the sight in one eye in a pickup basketball accident during his undergraduate years at Harvard University. There in his cabin, he had “no TV, no cell phone, and no computer,” but not out of any Luddite resistance. Rather, he sought — in his state of partial blindness — to explore “how the world entered me and how I entered the world.” Upon his return to Boston in 2001, he finds “the sidewalk had changed” because “cell-phone use had doubled in the two years” he spent away.
Of course, 19 years after that, everyone knows that the smartphone-fueled states of public distractedness, news-based anxiety, and shrinking attention spans have only deepened. As Axelrod notes, not without dismay, “the signs are everywhere” in that the capacity for empathy is “down 40 percent in college students over the past 20 years,” we have an “inability to be alone (six minutes without a phone and subjects chose to receive electroshocks rather than confront ‘solitude’),” and “in the U.S. people swipe or tap an average of 2,617 times a day.”
Fortunately, this book — continuing some of the ruminations he began in his previous one — is neither a screed nor a jeremiad; He’s not some “Walden”-type neckbeard screaming at Silicon Valley to get off his lawn. Lyrical and nonlinear, blending such scientific concepts as “neural Darwinism” and route knowledge versus survey knowledge with astute personal observations and witty anecdotes, Axelrod examines how the supreme adaptability of the human brain can be both a bug and a feature, depending on what it happens to be adapting to.
Coining the term “inner climate change” to describe the threats the digital world poses to our physical, emotional and spiritual ones, Axelrod organizes the book’s six chapters around the various endangered traits he most fears humanity surrendering to the machines. These qualities include everything from firsthand experience to curiosity to the ability to get lost in a true flow state to wonder itself.
“Wonder Google-style bypasses personal experience, bypasses how our memories are imperfect in personal and even wondrous ways,” he writes of a phone conversation with an old friend, reminiscing about such 1980s coming of age movies as “St. Elmo’s Fire.” “I didn’t really care about the full cast list. I cared about what each of us did or didn’t remember, and how browsing those memories could be like flipping through a photo album of our high school minds.”
Timely, essential, generous and never bitter, assembled with the roving structure of a book-length essay, “The Stars in Our Pockets” is not just a gentle exploration of the costs of living digitally; it is also a subtly prescriptive look at benefits of unplugging.
With examples from William James, Mary Oliver, Virginia Woolf, Oliver Sacks, Hannah Arendt and many more woven alongside his own, Axelrod offers a measured but urgent argument that “the portals in our pockets” are “ too good at responding to our immediate needs, too efficient at doing our bidding, for us to be getting lost in something larger than ourselves.”
Put down your phone and read this book. Maybe even get your friends to read it, too, and then have the kinds of conversations about it that can’t be had on social media.
January 3, 2020
I won a copy of this book.
Put down your phone and see how long you can go without checking it. Seriously, face down on the table. Within reach, but not touching it. Are you comfortable enough in your skin to leave it there for more than 5 minutes? Sit in silence for a moment. Will you allow the voice in your head to wander where ever it may take you?
Howard Axelrod asks the reader to slow down, observe the pace of everyday life. Take a walk around your neighborhood and go a different way. Watch things and find their patterns. Question and wonder, but think before looking up the answers on Google. This book was a good reminder to just stop and center yourself daily.
Put down your phone and see how long you can go without checking it. Seriously, face down on the table. Within reach, but not touching it. Are you comfortable enough in your skin to leave it there for more than 5 minutes? Sit in silence for a moment. Will you allow the voice in your head to wander where ever it may take you?
Howard Axelrod asks the reader to slow down, observe the pace of everyday life. Take a walk around your neighborhood and go a different way. Watch things and find their patterns. Question and wonder, but think before looking up the answers on Google. This book was a good reminder to just stop and center yourself daily.
February 20, 2020
Favorite thought-provoking/philosophical read of 2020, so far. I am having a love-hate relationship with the hyper-connected phone/internet/social media world, and this explores many of the concerns quite nicely. I don't feel a need to throw it all away, but it definitely is time to practice a bit of what's being preached here. So marvelously written and bringing in unforgettable personal experiences of the author as well as great outside sources (several of which I am now going to read/view). Strongly recommended. (As strongly as I recommended Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" a couple years ago.)
July 28, 2020
3.5 stars. Definitely some things to consider in this book. For example...how many times or for how long have you just quietly thought about something recently...before you reached for your phone to check email and social media...or to do a search on what you were pondering?
March 3, 2023
Lovely. I have read a few very practical books about our modern relationship to technology, and while helpful, they can end up feeling a bit cold and moralistic. This book was poetic, artful, and human. By itself, I think it would not feel satisfactorily thorough, but at this point I really wanted something to remind me of the *why* behind digital minimalism - something beautiful that appealed to emotions rather than logic and made me remember why any of this matters. This book did the trick.
Also, one of the most underlineable books I've read. I loved it.
Also, one of the most underlineable books I've read. I loved it.
February 5, 2020
It’s either to Howard Axelrod’s credit or to my blame (or both) that I was able to read so far into The Stars in Our Pockets before registering how purely technophobic the book is. Its tone is much more thoughtful than strident, much more open-minded than polemical. So much so that it took me several chapters to realize that the phrases listed in insets at the beginning of each chapter represent precious human capacities Axelrod asserts are being lost to technology, and that each chapter is subsequently divided into sections labeled “Why It Matters,” “Threats,” and “What You Can Do.”
It does not help to clarify the book’s technophobic stance that the contents of these sections are not always in line with their headings. It seems as if Axelrod may have started out with a survivalist-manual structure, but filled in that structure with something quite different. Most content is anecdotal and meditative, but in the aggregate comes off profoundly sad.
Axelrod clearly feels a keen loss in today’s society, part of which is the loss of getting lost — as he himself did for a couple of years of isolation that resulted in his previous The Point of Vanishing. He laments that, technologically enhanced as we are now, we almost always follow preconceived routes (of travel and of thought) and experience fewer happy accidents as a result.
It is true that every advance in technology obviates circumstances that were previously available for rendering into the type of story and song that stir people’s hearts. In 2020, Friar Lawrence’s message to the exiled Romeo would surely find its mark in time to save us from the beauty of the heroic couple’s tragic death. Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain” would never be written in the age of the cell phone, when the most lyrical possible eventuality of mistaking one’s rendezvous point is a few minutes’ delay in meeting up. The Israelites would never wander in the desert with proper GPS.
But is there anything intrinsically valuable about being lost, about being less than omnipotent? Or is the value available in such experiences just as available, by choice, to the empowered? Why, with perfect knowledge at my fingertips of the whole universe, could I not choose to disregard that knowledge and meander occasionally? Axelrod doesn’t really take this question on.
Likewise, Axelrod bemoans the way modern life layers the blogosphere atop people’s day-to-day existence, causing vertigo in him and others he has known. But what about the possibility, for which evidence abounds, that we have always been always multiplanar, individual as well as collective? In that case, technology can help us adapt to our own reality by allowing us to transition our focus more easily between the two.
The book never makes much distinction between the fact of such technology and the approach taken by the particular technologies that dominate today atop a rotting mound of capitalism, until the final chapter. At that point it imagines a kind of wholesome, sustainable social media engine, on which users can engage in long-form discussion free from manipulation for profit. Why oh why don’t we have such an engine, taught in schools and free to everyone? I can hear Axelrod wondering.
But the obstacle is plain: not technology but capitalism. In the end, the questions this book should be asking, born of the sincere bereavement Axelrod clearly feels, are the ones Jaron Lanier asks, and answers, in Who Owns The Future. I recommend it to him. Potential exists for technology that honors Axelrod’s (and our) every human capacity at the same time as it expands our reach and power evermore — but I fear this book is too grief-stricken to conceive of it. That is too bad.
It does not help to clarify the book’s technophobic stance that the contents of these sections are not always in line with their headings. It seems as if Axelrod may have started out with a survivalist-manual structure, but filled in that structure with something quite different. Most content is anecdotal and meditative, but in the aggregate comes off profoundly sad.
Axelrod clearly feels a keen loss in today’s society, part of which is the loss of getting lost — as he himself did for a couple of years of isolation that resulted in his previous The Point of Vanishing. He laments that, technologically enhanced as we are now, we almost always follow preconceived routes (of travel and of thought) and experience fewer happy accidents as a result.
It is true that every advance in technology obviates circumstances that were previously available for rendering into the type of story and song that stir people’s hearts. In 2020, Friar Lawrence’s message to the exiled Romeo would surely find its mark in time to save us from the beauty of the heroic couple’s tragic death. Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain” would never be written in the age of the cell phone, when the most lyrical possible eventuality of mistaking one’s rendezvous point is a few minutes’ delay in meeting up. The Israelites would never wander in the desert with proper GPS.
But is there anything intrinsically valuable about being lost, about being less than omnipotent? Or is the value available in such experiences just as available, by choice, to the empowered? Why, with perfect knowledge at my fingertips of the whole universe, could I not choose to disregard that knowledge and meander occasionally? Axelrod doesn’t really take this question on.
Likewise, Axelrod bemoans the way modern life layers the blogosphere atop people’s day-to-day existence, causing vertigo in him and others he has known. But what about the possibility, for which evidence abounds, that we have always been always multiplanar, individual as well as collective? In that case, technology can help us adapt to our own reality by allowing us to transition our focus more easily between the two.
The book never makes much distinction between the fact of such technology and the approach taken by the particular technologies that dominate today atop a rotting mound of capitalism, until the final chapter. At that point it imagines a kind of wholesome, sustainable social media engine, on which users can engage in long-form discussion free from manipulation for profit. Why oh why don’t we have such an engine, taught in schools and free to everyone? I can hear Axelrod wondering.
But the obstacle is plain: not technology but capitalism. In the end, the questions this book should be asking, born of the sincere bereavement Axelrod clearly feels, are the ones Jaron Lanier asks, and answers, in Who Owns The Future. I recommend it to him. Potential exists for technology that honors Axelrod’s (and our) every human capacity at the same time as it expands our reach and power evermore — but I fear this book is too grief-stricken to conceive of it. That is too bad.
November 15, 2023
The frustrations of the digital world... Being able to observe and feel grounded in your reality...
February 21, 2020
Looking back over the past generation you could easily be tempted to describe its entirety in a single word: progress. Time progressed, technology progressed, and society progressed right alongside, but author Howard Axelrod asks in his new book, "The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age", has our humanity and our empathy gone the other way?
Axelrod returned from a two-year escape into the Vermont wilderness to find a society eagerly rushing into online communities in an effort to be more connected, all while not looking up from their phones at the people sitting across the dinner table. He warns that in a world of instantaneous answers we are forgetting how to ask the right questions.
"The Stars in Our Pockets" builds an elegant window for us to look through and see what we are in danger of becoming. Our social structure is becoming increasingly frayed and “growing up” no longer holds the same meaning as “evolving” or even “learning”. At a time when all information is literally at our fingertips, the internet and those who profit from it are building stronger, and more invisible, echo chambers for us to live in.
Part memoir, part treatise, Axelrod reminds us of all the things we stand to lose if we continue to head in this direction. Without the silence of being truly disconnected from the constant beeps, chirps, and ever-changing vibrations in your pockets clamoring for our attention, we lack the ability to think deeply on any one thing. Our attention span retreats and dissolves until it is no longer a span of time, but instead a mere moment.
While admitting his escape into the woods more than a touch Thoreau, he doesn’t shout from his soapbox for everyone to unplug and immigrate out of cyberspace for good. There are incredibly positive attributes to the technology powering our future if we only take the time to see them and properly evangelize them. Towards the end of the book he even lays out a very reasonable and achievable blueprint for creating a new digital platform centered around voter education and participation.
"The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age" plays a dual role as map to the past and blueprint of our future. It will serve those well who put down their phone long enough to read it.
Axelrod returned from a two-year escape into the Vermont wilderness to find a society eagerly rushing into online communities in an effort to be more connected, all while not looking up from their phones at the people sitting across the dinner table. He warns that in a world of instantaneous answers we are forgetting how to ask the right questions.
"The Stars in Our Pockets" builds an elegant window for us to look through and see what we are in danger of becoming. Our social structure is becoming increasingly frayed and “growing up” no longer holds the same meaning as “evolving” or even “learning”. At a time when all information is literally at our fingertips, the internet and those who profit from it are building stronger, and more invisible, echo chambers for us to live in.
Part memoir, part treatise, Axelrod reminds us of all the things we stand to lose if we continue to head in this direction. Without the silence of being truly disconnected from the constant beeps, chirps, and ever-changing vibrations in your pockets clamoring for our attention, we lack the ability to think deeply on any one thing. Our attention span retreats and dissolves until it is no longer a span of time, but instead a mere moment.
While admitting his escape into the woods more than a touch Thoreau, he doesn’t shout from his soapbox for everyone to unplug and immigrate out of cyberspace for good. There are incredibly positive attributes to the technology powering our future if we only take the time to see them and properly evangelize them. Towards the end of the book he even lays out a very reasonable and achievable blueprint for creating a new digital platform centered around voter education and participation.
"The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age" plays a dual role as map to the past and blueprint of our future. It will serve those well who put down their phone long enough to read it.
November 2, 2022
I'm conflicted about this book. Axelrod is a great writer and I am inclined to his POV on smart phones and social media (though I'm writing this review in social media and on a smart phone) but I feel like there's a privilege in his viewpoint that he's missing -- the ability to take morning walks, the funds to go to the woods in Vermont for two years, etc. How is what he's worried we're losing available to single parents working two jobs? I don't disagree with him; I'd just like a person with a different background to write about the same topic. I did also question his comment about becoming less loving since returning from the woods -- if you're living in solitude with no regular contact with other people, what is the effect of being loving? It's the question of a tree falling in the woods ...
But I did enjoy the book and the questions it brought to mind.
But I did enjoy the book and the questions it brought to mind.
August 4, 2022
What shapes the way I see? The book examines this question, and the implications of it for our daily living, personally, and across multiple disciplines through the lenses of science, history, and philosophy. It is literary and contemplative, but not distant.
I was reading Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport when this book was recommended as something ‘similar’ that might interest me. It is similar, in that they both have digital minimalism as their focus, but that is where the similarities end.
Where Newport’s book reads like a well done how-to guide, Axelrod’s book feels like a long dreamy conversation on a balcony at sunset taking place over the course of a summer season sipping fresh lemonade from the past that you maybe forgot existed and were sure you had lost access to, but you discover in these pages that it is still there, accessible, and more necessary and refreshing than ever.
I was reading Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport when this book was recommended as something ‘similar’ that might interest me. It is similar, in that they both have digital minimalism as their focus, but that is where the similarities end.
Where Newport’s book reads like a well done how-to guide, Axelrod’s book feels like a long dreamy conversation on a balcony at sunset taking place over the course of a summer season sipping fresh lemonade from the past that you maybe forgot existed and were sure you had lost access to, but you discover in these pages that it is still there, accessible, and more necessary and refreshing than ever.
February 26, 2020
“What I want us to protect isn’t just the distinctive range of consciousness within each of us but also the ability to share that distinctiveness with each other. That’s the only way I’ve found to feel less alone. That’s the deepest way to look at the stars together. To recognize how fundamentally alone each of us is, locked in a separate body and a separate mind, and in that recognition to have the chance to feel all that reaches across the space between us, all the earth-deep connections among us that are real.”
This felt like reading Henry David Thoreau but in the digital age. And it really, really works.
This felt like reading Henry David Thoreau but in the digital age. And it really, really works.
March 1, 2021
I am very, very interested in how technology, most specifically the smartphone, is changing my brain and the brains of others. While the book offers only sparse, sometimes fantastical scenarios that would be, in the author’s view, a benefit to the fullness of human life, he does do a great job in illustrating what we are losing, what we have lost.
When I become a hermit in the woods in a few short years, the people who might one day read my manifesto could point to this book as a tipping point.
When I become a hermit in the woods in a few short years, the people who might one day read my manifesto could point to this book as a tipping point.
February 9, 2020
Just incredible. I was blown away by this book seriously. There were so many times where I had to put it down and say "omfg that's so effing true."
This book starts off with Darwin's natural selection theory and how it comes into play in the world of technology. Axelrod explains that never before did an animal have to adapt to dual realities because now we're in an age where we live both in the physical world and the technological world. This constant jumping back and forth might not be the greatest and we may be adapting qualities in one world that are hurting us in the other. This is the basic premise of the book and each chapter then discusses some different human traits/qualities that are "endangered" due to the way we use technology and well what we can try to do about it.
There are definitely times where I felt the book was really anti-progession and cynical towards technology. Despite that, this book is filled with philosophical quotes, statistics and anecdotes that help make sense of each chapter's main point. What we then get is the Enlightenment versus Romanticism ideologies and how essentially the both kind of need to work together if we want to retain these human qualities at their highest potentials.
I appreciate this book for, more than anything, giving me another lens to look at the world from. To be aware of the way that I interact with technology on a daily basis and how it may be effecting me, changing me.
This man took a lot of what I was feeling about technology and put it into a set of cohesive thoughts and explanations. It made sense of so many concerns I get from friends who are "taking social media breaks" or feeling like there's so much going on in the world for us to possibly keep up with and our inability to do anything to help out. Our lack of self awareness, our shorter attentions our sense of curiosity and even our ability to think for ourselves. All of it being in some way effected by technology. It made sense to me when reading this book and actually really encourages me to look up more books on this topic.
This book starts off with Darwin's natural selection theory and how it comes into play in the world of technology. Axelrod explains that never before did an animal have to adapt to dual realities because now we're in an age where we live both in the physical world and the technological world. This constant jumping back and forth might not be the greatest and we may be adapting qualities in one world that are hurting us in the other. This is the basic premise of the book and each chapter then discusses some different human traits/qualities that are "endangered" due to the way we use technology and well what we can try to do about it.
There are definitely times where I felt the book was really anti-progession and cynical towards technology. Despite that, this book is filled with philosophical quotes, statistics and anecdotes that help make sense of each chapter's main point. What we then get is the Enlightenment versus Romanticism ideologies and how essentially the both kind of need to work together if we want to retain these human qualities at their highest potentials.
I appreciate this book for, more than anything, giving me another lens to look at the world from. To be aware of the way that I interact with technology on a daily basis and how it may be effecting me, changing me.
This man took a lot of what I was feeling about technology and put it into a set of cohesive thoughts and explanations. It made sense of so many concerns I get from friends who are "taking social media breaks" or feeling like there's so much going on in the world for us to possibly keep up with and our inability to do anything to help out. Our lack of self awareness, our shorter attentions our sense of curiosity and even our ability to think for ourselves. All of it being in some way effected by technology. It made sense to me when reading this book and actually really encourages me to look up more books on this topic.
July 19, 2024
* Perspective is not looking from but looking through... how you see reality... and it's mutable
* Gerald Edelman Neural Darwinism talks about how brain physically alters... habits etc. are physically manifest in the brain... neurons that fire together wire together. Philosopher Oliver Sacks was very excited by this theory. Cell selection in an individual like natural selection of whole organisms in Darwinism. Visual cortex begins processing sound within 5 days of loss of sight (even with a blindfold).
* Brian designed for one world (however dynamically changing) but now we are living in two worlds. And, the skills necessary in each often are contradictory.
* Socrates looked down on reading not appreciating the empathy it could engender.
* What's endangered of our cognitive traits by our digital lives.
* What shapes how I see? Don't mistake the central question of your life for the central question of your culture.
* We need boundaries between the real world and digital world delineating the borders.
* Streets hold memories and can be seen only for efficiency
* Galileo confirms Copernicus heliocentric view of universe by noticing Jupiter had moons orbiting. it. Galileo had created a new map the Church wasn't ready for because it contradicted the Bible.
* New digital maps change orientation to us... ego-centric rather than heliocentric.
* If we can't get lost, outward searching can't turn inward.
* Attention was becoming decorative rather than essential.
* Lost summer vs. summer of lostness.
* Route knowledge (cursory) vs survey knowledge (comprehensive)
* Kant - Treat humanity as an end... not just means to an end... there are useful things we don't know in places we don't know rather than seeking what we already know.
* Patience with the ultimate lostness... death
Ch. 2 Clocksetters
* Railroad time was necessary for train schedules and people didn't like giving up each location's natural time.
* Frederick Winslow Taylor commoditized time in factories.
* No Exit by Sartre shows people who can't leave a room... social media looks to get us in a similar digital room... factory is now everywhere and at all times.
* Clock time (by the clock) vs event time (things take however they take and happen like when the cows are in the field etc.)
* Wired time has everything happening at once but not as it's coming from all different places and times
* Flow (being in the moment doing something that matters) and arousal (online without a point) which is pseudo flow.
Ch. 3 Frames
* Wonder comes when we come up against the unknowable but Google thinks its the answer.
* "To see takes time like to have a friend takes time" - Georgia O'Keefe play
* There's no end to looking... painting eludes investigation like science... it's a question and answer - Picasso
* AR could lead to the perception that everything can be known
* Questions arise from looking and not the reverse
* TJ Clark on looking at Poussin defends visual language that making, looking at, and remembering images that takes time, requires context... visual language that is irreducible. The visual flow (regime of the image) we are subjected to will not lead to knowledge let along self knowledge. Digital visual language encourages glimpsing.
* "How would I fair on a test for insight, seeing the big picture" etc.
* Our brains are designed to take shortcuts and if the digital world encourages shortcuts, we will take bad shortcuts.
* Repetition blurs facts as authoritarians always knew.
* Enlightenment believes world could be controlled and mastered. Romantics question if the that is possible or even desirable. Rousseau and Keats. Enlightenment is mixed now with capitalism collecting facts and ironically misinformation. Facts co-opted for money.
* Tony Fadell - iPhone developer wonders if the phone could empower people who didn't have access earlier or a bomb to destroy thought? Phones were designed for self-absorption and were designed by people without kids.
Ch. 4
* Attention requires focus and selection. External and internal AKA sensorial and intellectual.
* "Negative capability" by Keats is being comfortable without having all the information, being comfortable in uncertainties.
* Attention span comes from curiosity. Top 10 lists give people a curiosity about something they didn't care about stealing their attention.
* Curiosity of the world is becoming obsolete. Curiosity capable of negative capability. Many people would prefer electric shocks over being left along with their thoughts.
* Dopamine has no satisfaction level... we always want more. Variable reward keeps us coming back because we don't know what we'll get.
* What if we no longer have the patience to pay attention to the world or other people? What if we no longer need love? All this rather than being scared of the robots rising up.
* Traffic light was designed by a Detroit police officer
* Henry James "Three things are important in human life. First is to be kind, second is to be kind, and third is to be kind."
Ch. 5 Identity Theft
* Spent childhood being denied of a TV in his room lying bed thinking about the part of the days that gave him pause because they probably had pieces of the big mysteries and questions he was wrestling with.
* How do you find your own way of looking at things? Not being the self society etc. may be imposing on you.
* Your sense of identity can give way under sufficient strain. William James divides self into material (home, money), social (peer recognition), and spiritual (worth losing the other two over... where pleasure and pain speak). Has social media helped kill our spiritual side? Spiritual self made things certain again for him after accident.
* White people can grow up without the double consciousness that minorities often have.
* In Invisible Man the Black Man realizes a white man cursing him out only sees him through his social self. Black Man's spiritual side garners sympathy and keeps him from killing the White Man.
* Gift by Czeslow Milosz thinking of not wanting to possess anything, forgiving anyone who did him wrong, forgive himself for his past (through the three selves). Spiritual self connects with the physical world and back again.
* Comfort without needing to fit into a group
* "To the moments we don't share with anyone."
Ch. 6 Conversational Boxes
* Boxes are getting too small and that was before Twitter etc. yet small boxes can make us think hard about what we're saying like Japanese poems (with limited space).
* Social media wired to serve authoritarians over protestors (Montgomery boycott had years to organize to withstand its difficulties... bigger protests come together quickly now but without the strong bonds... but, authoritarians only need to sow doubt and anger which social media is great at)
* "Praise for attempt to see things in a wider context becomes so formalized it becomes a single and widely used model of thinking... what seems an attempt to see things in a complex way is actually complex blindness" Vaclav Havel
* How much do you trust someone trying to describe a house? Experiment in critical thinking by George Saunders in Braindead Megaphone. Someone describing a house to someone who can't see it requires clarity of language, lack of agenda, time for communication, care put into message. This was written about the Iraq Invasion before social media.
* Nicholas Carr in 2016 election describes simplifying and speeding up communication taking depth out of political discourse.
Conclusion
* Phones don't let you get lost in the immeasurable, things bigger than yourself.
* Must protect our solitudes... ourselves... and how we share / communicate them.
* Gerald Edelman Neural Darwinism talks about how brain physically alters... habits etc. are physically manifest in the brain... neurons that fire together wire together. Philosopher Oliver Sacks was very excited by this theory. Cell selection in an individual like natural selection of whole organisms in Darwinism. Visual cortex begins processing sound within 5 days of loss of sight (even with a blindfold).
* Brian designed for one world (however dynamically changing) but now we are living in two worlds. And, the skills necessary in each often are contradictory.
* Socrates looked down on reading not appreciating the empathy it could engender.
* What's endangered of our cognitive traits by our digital lives.
* What shapes how I see? Don't mistake the central question of your life for the central question of your culture.
* We need boundaries between the real world and digital world delineating the borders.
* Streets hold memories and can be seen only for efficiency
* Galileo confirms Copernicus heliocentric view of universe by noticing Jupiter had moons orbiting. it. Galileo had created a new map the Church wasn't ready for because it contradicted the Bible.
* New digital maps change orientation to us... ego-centric rather than heliocentric.
* If we can't get lost, outward searching can't turn inward.
* Attention was becoming decorative rather than essential.
* Lost summer vs. summer of lostness.
* Route knowledge (cursory) vs survey knowledge (comprehensive)
* Kant - Treat humanity as an end... not just means to an end... there are useful things we don't know in places we don't know rather than seeking what we already know.
* Patience with the ultimate lostness... death
Ch. 2 Clocksetters
* Railroad time was necessary for train schedules and people didn't like giving up each location's natural time.
* Frederick Winslow Taylor commoditized time in factories.
* No Exit by Sartre shows people who can't leave a room... social media looks to get us in a similar digital room... factory is now everywhere and at all times.
* Clock time (by the clock) vs event time (things take however they take and happen like when the cows are in the field etc.)
* Wired time has everything happening at once but not as it's coming from all different places and times
* Flow (being in the moment doing something that matters) and arousal (online without a point) which is pseudo flow.
Ch. 3 Frames
* Wonder comes when we come up against the unknowable but Google thinks its the answer.
* "To see takes time like to have a friend takes time" - Georgia O'Keefe play
* There's no end to looking... painting eludes investigation like science... it's a question and answer - Picasso
* AR could lead to the perception that everything can be known
* Questions arise from looking and not the reverse
* TJ Clark on looking at Poussin defends visual language that making, looking at, and remembering images that takes time, requires context... visual language that is irreducible. The visual flow (regime of the image) we are subjected to will not lead to knowledge let along self knowledge. Digital visual language encourages glimpsing.
* "How would I fair on a test for insight, seeing the big picture" etc.
* Our brains are designed to take shortcuts and if the digital world encourages shortcuts, we will take bad shortcuts.
* Repetition blurs facts as authoritarians always knew.
* Enlightenment believes world could be controlled and mastered. Romantics question if the that is possible or even desirable. Rousseau and Keats. Enlightenment is mixed now with capitalism collecting facts and ironically misinformation. Facts co-opted for money.
* Tony Fadell - iPhone developer wonders if the phone could empower people who didn't have access earlier or a bomb to destroy thought? Phones were designed for self-absorption and were designed by people without kids.
Ch. 4
* Attention requires focus and selection. External and internal AKA sensorial and intellectual.
* "Negative capability" by Keats is being comfortable without having all the information, being comfortable in uncertainties.
* Attention span comes from curiosity. Top 10 lists give people a curiosity about something they didn't care about stealing their attention.
* Curiosity of the world is becoming obsolete. Curiosity capable of negative capability. Many people would prefer electric shocks over being left along with their thoughts.
* Dopamine has no satisfaction level... we always want more. Variable reward keeps us coming back because we don't know what we'll get.
* What if we no longer have the patience to pay attention to the world or other people? What if we no longer need love? All this rather than being scared of the robots rising up.
* Traffic light was designed by a Detroit police officer
* Henry James "Three things are important in human life. First is to be kind, second is to be kind, and third is to be kind."
Ch. 5 Identity Theft
* Spent childhood being denied of a TV in his room lying bed thinking about the part of the days that gave him pause because they probably had pieces of the big mysteries and questions he was wrestling with.
* How do you find your own way of looking at things? Not being the self society etc. may be imposing on you.
* Your sense of identity can give way under sufficient strain. William James divides self into material (home, money), social (peer recognition), and spiritual (worth losing the other two over... where pleasure and pain speak). Has social media helped kill our spiritual side? Spiritual self made things certain again for him after accident.
* White people can grow up without the double consciousness that minorities often have.
* In Invisible Man the Black Man realizes a white man cursing him out only sees him through his social self. Black Man's spiritual side garners sympathy and keeps him from killing the White Man.
* Gift by Czeslow Milosz thinking of not wanting to possess anything, forgiving anyone who did him wrong, forgive himself for his past (through the three selves). Spiritual self connects with the physical world and back again.
* Comfort without needing to fit into a group
* "To the moments we don't share with anyone."
Ch. 6 Conversational Boxes
* Boxes are getting too small and that was before Twitter etc. yet small boxes can make us think hard about what we're saying like Japanese poems (with limited space).
* Social media wired to serve authoritarians over protestors (Montgomery boycott had years to organize to withstand its difficulties... bigger protests come together quickly now but without the strong bonds... but, authoritarians only need to sow doubt and anger which social media is great at)
* "Praise for attempt to see things in a wider context becomes so formalized it becomes a single and widely used model of thinking... what seems an attempt to see things in a complex way is actually complex blindness" Vaclav Havel
* How much do you trust someone trying to describe a house? Experiment in critical thinking by George Saunders in Braindead Megaphone. Someone describing a house to someone who can't see it requires clarity of language, lack of agenda, time for communication, care put into message. This was written about the Iraq Invasion before social media.
* Nicholas Carr in 2016 election describes simplifying and speeding up communication taking depth out of political discourse.
Conclusion
* Phones don't let you get lost in the immeasurable, things bigger than yourself.
* Must protect our solitudes... ourselves... and how we share / communicate them.
August 23, 2020
I generally enjoy reading books on this topic, because they remind me of the pleasures of silence, deep thinking, and the dangers of a constantly interrupted mind. It's a nice meditation. I gave it three starts because I didn't walk away with anything all that profound, nor did I find it to be very engaging, but I it has its moments:
Americans tap their phones on average ~2,500 per day, "jumping back and forth so frequently the resulting disorientation has blurred into a nameless unease. We're forgetting we're lost and we're forgetting what we're losing, which is a far cry from being well-adapted." I think the point about for forgetting here is spot on. Again, it the frog boiling in water. We don't know what we're missing.
I liked the point about how GPS navigation changes our relationship with the world: "to treat everywhere but your destination as a means relegates the in-between places on the map to second-class status, and, more importantly, may relegate the in-between places in your own psyche--the curiosity, the sense of adventure, the desire to orient yourself as a a part of something larger than yourself--to second-class status as well, constantly rerouting you back towards your original destination, towards efficiency, towards no tolerance for error, which means no tolerance for wandering." I loved this. I realized I tend to hold efficiency as supreme above all else, which it isn't always. Maybe there are things to be gained by difficulty, by boredom, by having to contend with our surroundings.
A gorgeous passage about being with an ex-girlfriend after not having seen each other for a while: "We were sitting inside my father's car at this point, parked on a quiet side road beside a meadow, and I felt like I was in high school parked with my girlfriend, and also in my twenties during the summer I lived in a fancy garage nearby, and also in my thirties when the woman beside me had actually been my girlfriend, and also in my forties with the future contracting--the heat going in the car, the Monday afternoon pulling me to drive back into Boston and catch a flight to Chicago. Once we said goodbye, time would sweep forward, our daily lives would slam into gear. Her shoulder nuzzled against mine, the touch holding us together as we held ourselves back, and the moment felt almost large enough for us to live inside. But time was pulling on us--the limited time we had left together, the limited time each of us had left, apart from the other, to make a life".
Americans tap their phones on average ~2,500 per day, "jumping back and forth so frequently the resulting disorientation has blurred into a nameless unease. We're forgetting we're lost and we're forgetting what we're losing, which is a far cry from being well-adapted." I think the point about for forgetting here is spot on. Again, it the frog boiling in water. We don't know what we're missing.
I liked the point about how GPS navigation changes our relationship with the world: "to treat everywhere but your destination as a means relegates the in-between places on the map to second-class status, and, more importantly, may relegate the in-between places in your own psyche--the curiosity, the sense of adventure, the desire to orient yourself as a a part of something larger than yourself--to second-class status as well, constantly rerouting you back towards your original destination, towards efficiency, towards no tolerance for error, which means no tolerance for wandering." I loved this. I realized I tend to hold efficiency as supreme above all else, which it isn't always. Maybe there are things to be gained by difficulty, by boredom, by having to contend with our surroundings.
A gorgeous passage about being with an ex-girlfriend after not having seen each other for a while: "We were sitting inside my father's car at this point, parked on a quiet side road beside a meadow, and I felt like I was in high school parked with my girlfriend, and also in my twenties during the summer I lived in a fancy garage nearby, and also in my thirties when the woman beside me had actually been my girlfriend, and also in my forties with the future contracting--the heat going in the car, the Monday afternoon pulling me to drive back into Boston and catch a flight to Chicago. Once we said goodbye, time would sweep forward, our daily lives would slam into gear. Her shoulder nuzzled against mine, the touch holding us together as we held ourselves back, and the moment felt almost large enough for us to live inside. But time was pulling on us--the limited time we had left together, the limited time each of us had left, apart from the other, to make a life".
January 21, 2023
The Stars in our Pockets isn’t just another neo-luddite book decrying the evils of modern technology, and specifically social media and cell phones. What Axelrod really tries to convey, is the importance of perspective, essentially the lens through which we view the world. What factors influence that lens? Are those factors internal or external? To what extent does Silicon Valley’s values influence your own? What is lost when we lose the ability to simply be still and focus on what is happening in front of us? This book poses and answers many of these questions. At no point does the author suggest “burn your cellphones, delete your social media, break the tv”, although after reading this book you may want too. Rather Axelrod, true to the spirit of the book, allows you to evaluate yourself and perform introspection.
The title of the book itself, is derived from a rather clever metaphor, sailors used to use the stars to guide them on their journeys, and we tend to use our handheld devices in the same manner, making them the stars in our pockets. Axelrod encourages you to examine what stars you’re navigating by, what skills you may be losing, and encourages you to reengage with reality. He does this with exquisite prose, that, at least in my opinion, didn’t become distractingly purple. I found it engaging, direct, and thought provoking.
For being such a small and slender book, Axelrod deals with a lot of subjects, such as, romanticism, art criticism, psychology, and many others. He is well read on all of these subjects and provides valuable and practical insight into each subject.
This book really pulled me in, it helped me to understand the meaning and importance of attention, and how that attention shapes our sense of self and reality. I felt sucked in when I opened up the book and started to read. I heartily recommend this book, it encourages non-judgmental introspection and conversation.
https://adruidinthedesert.wordpress.c...
The title of the book itself, is derived from a rather clever metaphor, sailors used to use the stars to guide them on their journeys, and we tend to use our handheld devices in the same manner, making them the stars in our pockets. Axelrod encourages you to examine what stars you’re navigating by, what skills you may be losing, and encourages you to reengage with reality. He does this with exquisite prose, that, at least in my opinion, didn’t become distractingly purple. I found it engaging, direct, and thought provoking.
For being such a small and slender book, Axelrod deals with a lot of subjects, such as, romanticism, art criticism, psychology, and many others. He is well read on all of these subjects and provides valuable and practical insight into each subject.
This book really pulled me in, it helped me to understand the meaning and importance of attention, and how that attention shapes our sense of self and reality. I felt sucked in when I opened up the book and started to read. I heartily recommend this book, it encourages non-judgmental introspection and conversation.
https://adruidinthedesert.wordpress.c...
January 5, 2022
This is a contemplation on the world we now live in. And it's frightening as it is shocking to think how these electronic hand-held devices have come to dominate practically everything most adults do, but now, in the hands of teenagers and even children, I can only wonder where this will all lead. And so does this author. Interspersed throughout this meditation of sorts, we get tidbits of wisdom and some profound insights from wiser souls of the past, such as Henry James' advice to his nephew to be kind, to be kind, to be kind as the best way to lead one's life. Or the sage Buddhist contemplative to his pupil, that to pay attention is of single most importance.
Years ago, I made the unpopular decision to put off purchasing a Smart Phone. Since I am also a writer and at my desk top computer for hours at a time daily, I felt I did not wish to bring a hand- held computer once I ventured outdoors away from virtual reality and into actual reality. This is a highly unpopular choice! (I have a basic cellphone and I don't text). The author is probably just ten years or so younger than I and he cherishes real lived experience above all else. How rare! Who else out there is thinking this way? Not many, it seems.When Apple announces that it is now valued at $3 Trillion, it makes me shudder. What happened to discernment?What happened to being an individual? This read will get you thinking on these things and speculating on what will be missing in humans in the future: the capacity to love? Yes. To "pay attention" to what
is truly important? Yes. To lose one's ability to empathize? Yes. Read it and weep!
Years ago, I made the unpopular decision to put off purchasing a Smart Phone. Since I am also a writer and at my desk top computer for hours at a time daily, I felt I did not wish to bring a hand- held computer once I ventured outdoors away from virtual reality and into actual reality. This is a highly unpopular choice! (I have a basic cellphone and I don't text). The author is probably just ten years or so younger than I and he cherishes real lived experience above all else. How rare! Who else out there is thinking this way? Not many, it seems.When Apple announces that it is now valued at $3 Trillion, it makes me shudder. What happened to discernment?What happened to being an individual? This read will get you thinking on these things and speculating on what will be missing in humans in the future: the capacity to love? Yes. To "pay attention" to what
is truly important? Yes. To lose one's ability to empathize? Yes. Read it and weep!
January 25, 2023
An interesting book. In brief, Axelrod has an eye injury in high school leading to a shift in perception of the world. This was followed by two years of isolation in a cabin in Vermont - an insular way of life so to say. As he returned to Boston he came across a cultural shift as smart phones suddenly were the rage. The book is filled with perspectives focused on how the heavy use of smart phones and the world of the internet have changed how we interact socially. Axelrod looks at how our attention span has plummeted combined with the numerous distractions (real life and electronic) around us. He muses on how we are alienated from nature as virtual screen experiences are the norm, and he ponders how our writing has changed because of these types of communication (text etc). The book was a little bit drawn out, but I agree with much of what Axelrod is putting forward. Personally, as an academic, I have found it more and more difficult to focus on longterm focused tasks over the last twenty years. Reading is one of those enterprises - there is somehow always some other task in the background that requires attention. Are we lost in the digital age? Anyways, it is an interesting little book that is worthwhile pondering as the storm of the digital world is intensifying.
May 7, 2020
The human brain's ability to adapt has been an evolutionary advantage for the last 40,000 years, but now, for the first time in human history, we're effectively living in two environments at once--the natural and the digital--and many of the traits that help us online don't help us offline, and vice versa. Drawing on his experience of acclimating to a life of solitude in the woods and then to digital life upon his return to the city, Howard Axelrod explores the human brain's impressive but indiscriminate ability to adapt to its surroundings. The Stars in Our Pockets is a portrait of, as well as a meditation on, what Axelrod comes to think of as "inner climate change." Just as we're losing diversity of plant and animal species due to the environmental crisis, so too are we losing the diversity and range of our minds due to changes in our cognitive environment.
As we navigate the rapid shifts between the physical and digital realms, what traits are we trading without being aware of it? The Stars in Our Pockets is a personal and profound reminder of the world around us and the worlds within us--and how, as alienated as we may sometimes feel, they were made for each other.
As we navigate the rapid shifts between the physical and digital realms, what traits are we trading without being aware of it? The Stars in Our Pockets is a personal and profound reminder of the world around us and the worlds within us--and how, as alienated as we may sometimes feel, they were made for each other.
June 3, 2020
I loved his first book and was completely thrilled with the idea of this one, as it's one of my favorite topics and there are few books on it. I did enjoy the stories and his writing, but I guess I found myself a little without a compass to get to where he was directing me. I'm not sure I learned anything. I like the overall message; I'm just a little lost as to who will benefit from it. If you're already thinking about digital minimalism and wondering about what we've lost when we've gained all this technology, there isn't really anything new here. It's all very vague. And if you haven't thought about it, I think the guideposts here aren't clear enough to know where to head next.
Still, his writing is interesting and I liked the journey, even if I've come to the end of the road and am not quite sure where I am. :)
Still, his writing is interesting and I liked the journey, even if I've come to the end of the road and am not quite sure where I am. :)
July 17, 2020
I wanted so much to enjoy this book but frankly it’s lacking. It’s lacking a cohesive story, a narrative that runs through the whole book. I found it very choppy. Everything was short little bits.
There was a sentence here or a sentence there that had some wisdom but frankly I wanted more data. I wish he had expanded on his section about our lack of empathy that social media is creating (that was his best part)
This book was difficult to read not due to subject matter but due to writing style.
There was a sentence here or a sentence there that had some wisdom but frankly I wanted more data. I wish he had expanded on his section about our lack of empathy that social media is creating (that was his best part)
This book was difficult to read not due to subject matter but due to writing style.
May 19, 2020
The perfect book to begin reading in Lent. Axelrod explores the ways that our dependence on technology changes our relationship with ourselves, our perspectives, and our shared realities. He views 'inner climate change' as having transformative potential on par with climate change - I'm persuaded. This book is an invitation to slow down and take stock of how we actually move about in the world. I've been surprised by how phone-dependent I am.
November 17, 2020
Howard Axelrod describes how we as a species have started to be in the cyber world so deeply that it has become a world onto itself, often stealing away time from our real world.
What we overlook everyday in our natural world is sometimes more important than what we can’t miss on social media.
I know I make efforts to stay away from social media, but I need to do more. It opened my eyes to what I’ve been missing.
What we overlook everyday in our natural world is sometimes more important than what we can’t miss on social media.
I know I make efforts to stay away from social media, but I need to do more. It opened my eyes to what I’ve been missing.
August 25, 2020
It's likely that this book spoke to me so much as I often find myself anti-technology. The author has some unique experiences which he draws on to analyze the various ways we see the world around us, through various lenses. I think this is a valuable read as we head deeper down the hole of google, alexa, and "answers being at the tip of our fingers".
January 6, 2020
This book is full of food for thought. I'm still grokking it so I have some issues to in words my thoughts.
I can only say something like Please-read-it.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
I can only say something like Please-read-it.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
January 24, 2020
I won this book in the giveaway! My thoughts lost some coherency as Howard Axelrod took me through different thought processes, exposing me to new ideas at the same time. Inspiring. Is sure to leave you awe-struck!
February 3, 2020
Literary nonfiction reads as an essay. Axel rods treatise on how digital things like cellphones change our brains is not a reflection of research or scientific investigation. However, it is very readable and gives a glimpse into the author’s own life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 30, 2020
A serious read that everyone should take the time to read, comprehend and then read again. There is so much thought and wisdom in this book. He really is right the Stars are in Our Pockets. This book is transformative, inspiring! I am so happy I read it.
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