'Always On': the world's past, present and future — in a smartphone
'Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future — and Locked Us In'
By Brian X. Chen
Da Capo Press, 288 pp., $29
Socrates once warned that the written word would destroy our memories. A couple thousand years later, a Swiss scientist argued that the spread of books would lead to information overload. In the 1880s, a medical journal claimed that schools imprison children's bodies and exhaust their brains.
"Now the latest subject of fear is the smartphone nestled in our pockets," writes Brian X. Chen, former associate editor for MacWorld and a writer for Wired.com .
"[O]ur minds and bodies will probably go on unharmed in an age that's always on," he writes in a new book titled "Always On."
Thankfully, Chen's book is not about cheerleading. It is a smart, engaging overview of studies, articles and arguments about our increasingly online world — and a look at how corporations got us here and how much further we could go.
There is no consensus about what the "always on" world is doing to our brains and lives.
Chen mentions well-known pro and con examples: Recent pro-democracy protests in Iran were driven by messages posted on Twitter; an infant starved to death in Korea because her parents were addicted to an online game in which they raised virtual daughters; Barack Obama's populist presidential campaign was propelled by web videos, Twitter and an iPhone application.
He finds it ironic that Obama later said information has become "a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation... [I]t's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."
But the research is inconclusive.
While students who are hooked on video games get worse grades, it is not because their brains have been harmed. In fact, some studies show that video games increase certain types of brainpower. The problem is that video games can be addictive — and keep students from participating in tutoring and other after-school activities.
Scientists also are debating whether multitasking is destructive — or even new. "If you think Twitter is an attention magnet, try living with an infant," one scientist argues.
The most fascinating, and potentially frightening, part of "Always On" describes where we are headed.
A university in Texas uses iPhones to poll students during class to learn whether they understand a lesson. Students are participating more than before, and their grades have improved.
Populism In The 1880s - News
In the 1880s, a medical journal claimed that schools imprison children's bodies and exhaust their brains. "Now the latest subject of fear is the smartphone nestled in our pockets," writes Brian X. Chen, former associate editor for MacWorld and a writer
American Bell made remarkable profit margins in the 1880s. They "hovered around 46 percent," John notes. Bell put some of these earnings back into the business; the rest went to shareholders. Not surprisingly, most Bell stockholders didn't sell their
In both cases, there were striking similarities to what is happening now, including in the 1880s the first court decision granting corporate personhood - recently expanded by the Supreme Court. But the major characteristic of these eras was that big
In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America's largest-scale working people's cooperative, formed a People's Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential
Their populism is vociferous precisely to hide their conviction that most people are barely fit to govern themselves as individuals, let alone one another: Only Nietzschian, or at least Randian, generators and investors of wealth are fit to govern.
"civic populism," an essay by guest blogger harry boyte
(April 20, 2006) on "populist movements ... promising to redistribute wealth [that] threaten to create a political free-for-all that could weaken already unstable countries." Jorge Castañeda followed with an op ed ("Good Neighbor Policy," NYT , May 4, 2006), arguing that immigration reform is needed in order to halt "the wave of populism that has swept Latin American cities."
Peter Levine, who invited me to reflect on populism in this civic space, has termed the rhetorical championing of innocent people against nefarious elites, "sentimental populism" (August 23, 2004) . Yet in civic terms populism can be understood as something different, the heritage of democratic politics in the United States that is an alternative to liberalism and conservatism, with new currency today.
Populism took explicit shape in the movement of black and white farmers and their blue collar and professional allies in the 1880s and 1890s, culminating in the short-lived "People's Party." In broader terms it is a tradition in which civic agency and civic life built through cooperative work formed an alternative both to the paternalistic state and the untamed market. As the historian Eric Foner has argued, "Precapitalist culture ... was the incubator of resistance to capitalist development in the United States. The world of the artisan and small farmer persisted ... into the twentieth century and powerfully influenced American radical movements. ... These movements inherited an older republican tradition hostile to large accumulations of property, but viewing small property as the foundation of economic and civic autonomy." Foner proposed that in the U.S. it was "not the absence of non-liberal ideas but the persistence of a radical vision resting on small property [that] inhibited the rise of socialist ideologies." The emphasis on civic agency took new forms in the 20th century in an identifiable strand of democratic thought and action, what can be called civic populism or citizen-centered politics. This combines democratic respect and democratic power with democratic development--the idea that "the people shall govern" as they prepare themselves to govern. Civic populism has surfaced in broad movements such as early 20th century progressivism, New Deal reforms in the 1930s and 1940s, and the civil rights movement. Civic populism includes figures as diverse as Jane Addams, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Alinsky, Ella Baker, the Rev. Martin Luther King, and Linda Chavez-Thompson in our time. It also runs as important threads in the policy ideas and civic philosophies of political leaders such as the late Vice President Hubert Humphrey and the late Republican governor [of Minnesota] Elmer Andersen.
Populism In The 1880s - Bookshelf
The Populist Vision
In her study of the rise of interest group politics in the United States, Elisabeth Clemens examines how the democracy of rural Populism of the 1880s and ...Origins of the new South fifty years later, the continuing influence of a historical classic
... that finds fundamental differences between Populism and Progress- ivism.42 A ... Populism of the 1880s-1890s and agrarian reform of the Progressive era? ...Socialism and nationalism
Indeed, classical Populism included both revolutionary Populism of the 1870s and 1880s and legal Populism of the 1880s and 1890s. ...Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought
The North American populists of the 1880s and 1890s were mainly self-reliant ( but increasingly commercial) farmers, who saw themselves as forming the ...Spokesman
Indeed, classical Populism included both revolutionary Populism of the 1870s and 1880s and legal Populism of the 1880s and 1890s. ...Daily Article Directory
populism: Definition from Answers.com
populism n. A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite
Narodnichestvo definition of Narodnichestvo in the Free ...
Liberal Populism, which had not previously played a substantial role, became dominant in the mid-1880's. ... From the 1880's through the 1890's, Populism underwent a grave ...
The Populist Movement and the Struggle for Reform in America
1. The Farm Crisis and the rise of Populism. The United States (1900): Territorial Map ... In the 1880s and 1890s, small farmers were increasingly threatened ...
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Populist Party
Populism, which directly challenged the dominance of the Democratic ... Populism attracted followers in all of the southern states, but it was especially strong ...
Black populism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black Populism found early expression in various agrarian organizations, including the ... In the 1870s and 1880s, democrats and independents had sometimes used ...