The Stars in Our Pockets
Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Beautiful, elegantly expressed” meditations on the ‘inner climate change’ we experience as we shift between our offline and online lives—for fans of Oliver Sacks and David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water (New York Review of Books).
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Axelrod (The Point of Vanishing), director of Loyola's creative writing program, provides powerful arguments against today's all-encompassing digital world in this concise and insightful meditation. After being blinded in one eye while playing basketball, Axelrod, then a college junior, was forced to adjust to the loss of peripheral vision and depth perception, leading him to a more general, lifelong interest in the factors shaping his view of the world. This search acquired new urgency after the 2016 presidential election led him to conclude that people, dependent on their digital devices, have become "lost in a new way, disoriented in our very disorientation." To illustrate the benefits of drawing on one's own memory and observation skills, he discusses the cognitive benefits of navigating without recourse to GPS, citing findings that London cab drivers, famous for their in-depth geographic knowledge, had larger than usual hippocampi. Other benefits of unplugging he discusses include the ability to wander and thus make unexpected discoveries, immersing oneself in an activity and entering what psychologists term "the flow state," and cultivating a sense of curiosity and patience. While Axelrod's basic message is familiar, his impassioned plea for a less smartphone-centric existence should resonate with many.
