The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us

In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.

Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.

From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.

With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.

作者簡介

尼可拉斯．卡爾（Nicholas Carr）

　　知名作家，鑽研商業策 略、創新科技與網路資訊等。因為擅長領域多樣，更能跨領域地闢出一條獨特思路，堪稱我們這個網路時代最清醒的思想家。他在《哈佛商業評論》、《大西洋月 刊》、《華爾街日報》等著名刊物發表的文章都引起激烈討論。曾著有 《IT 有什麼明天？》（Does IT Matter？）、《網路讓我們變笨？：數位科技正在改變我們的大腦、思考與閱讀行為》（The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains）等。

　　Nicholas Carr is an acclaimed writer on technology and culture whose books have been translated into more than 25 languages. His new book, "The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us," examines the personal, social, and economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers, apps, and robots to do our jobs and live our lives. The New York Times Book Review called the book "essential," and the Wall Street Journal termed it "elegant."

　　"The Glass Cage" expands the arguments in Carr's previous book,"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,"which was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. A New York Times bestseller,"The Shallows" discusses the cognitive consequences of Internet and computer use and, more broadly, examines the role that media and other technologies have played in shaping the way people think.

　　Carr is also the author of the 2008 Wall Street Journal bestseller "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google," which the Financial Times called "the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing," and of the much-discussed 2004 book "Does IT Matter?" In addition to writing books, Carr contributes articles and essays to many newspapers and magazines. He wrote the celebrated and much-anthologized essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," which appeared in The Atlantic, and he has also contributed to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, Wired, and Nature. He was formerly the executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. Carr blogs at www.roughtype.com. More information about his work can be found at his website, www.nicholascarr.com. [Author photo by Scott Keneally.