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"When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt's conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers - Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt's argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice.Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday. But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive role for technologies within our lives."--
List of contents
1. Introduction
2. Distraction
3. Developed experience
4. Meaning in life
5. Focal things and practices
6. Identity-work
7. A note of cautious optimism
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Tiger Roholt is Professor of Philosophy at Montclair State University, USA. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University. His recent essays have appeared in Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He is the author of Groove (2014).
Summary
When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity.
By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt’s conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers — Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt’s argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice.
Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday. But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive role for technologies within our lives.
Foreword
When smartphones risk damaging traditional ways of creating meaning in our lives, philosophy shows us how it is still possible to establish meaningful connections with each other and ourselves.
Additional text
[T]he author follows a phenomenological and descriptive goal, and for that reason this is a perfect book to better understand the theoretical shapes and forms of smartphones and of our relation with them ...[T]his is a brilliant book of philosophy of smartphones, as in on or about smartphones, ...It is a useful descriptive essay, not an instruction manual.
