Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age |  | Author: William Powers
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Rating:  41 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0061687162
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4833
EAN: 9780061687167
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Product Description
A crisp, passionately argued answer to the question that everyone who's grown dependent on digital devices is asking: "Where's the rest of my life?" At a time when we're all trying to make sense of our relentlessly connected lives, this revelatory book presents a bold new approach to the digital age. Part intellectual journey, part memoir, Hamlet's BlackBerry sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose an enormous burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave. Hamlet's BlackBerry argues that we need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. To find it, Powers reaches into the past, uncovering a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years. New technologies have always brought the mix of excitement and stress that we feel today. Drawing on some of history's most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, he shows that digital connectedness serves us best when it's balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness. Using his own life as laboratory and object lesson, Powers demonstrates why this is the moment to revisit our relationship to screens and mobile technologies, and how profound the rewards of doing so can be. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet's BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
 Information overload - time for intervention June 2, 2010
Sreeram Ramakrishnan (Lynnfield, MA)
37 out of 40 found this review helpful
In this well-researched, thought-provoking book, Powers presents a sobering look at how we have let technology impact our views about the world and our relationship to it. Drawing parallels from paradigm-shifting events from the not-so-recent past (the written word in Plato's time, invention of the printing press), Powers employs some distilled (cherry-picked, one could argue) philosophical interpretations to define the current state ("digital maximism") and our evolving notions of connectedness (he argues that this evolution is mostly detrimental).
One cannot but admire the sheer amount of research and reflection that has shaped each chapter. The notions of distance (Plato), inner space (Seneca), "inwardness of technologies" (Gutenberg), embodied cognition and evolution of tools (Shakespeare), the power of positive rituals (Franklin), the need for Walden zones, and managing the quality of ones experience (inner thermostat - McLuhan) may seem disparate and disjointed to almost any reader. But Powers manages to convey a very powerful unifying theme, centered on an investigation of trying to characterize the impact of our gadget-centric life ("screens") by understanding how earlier generations have accommodated change. (while the investigation is mostly rooted in a philosophical framing, the underlying question of course is quite existential - how connected should we be?)
Powers' eagerness to impress upon us the craziness of our degree of connectedness to the "screens" and a constant reassurance that he is not against technology forces him to be repetitive at times. Despite the novel interpretations and arguments, Powers comes up short in addressing "what can one do to change behavior?". Nevertheless, Powers successfully sustains the reader's interest and curiosity (What can Plato or Shakespeare possibly know about Facebook-type connectivity?). The lucid interpretations of some of Philosophy's foundational work (Plato's Dialogs, for example) and a summary chapter highlighting the key Philosophy principles relevant to his arguments are alone worth the book.
Some themes are similar to those seen in You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto - another excellent read. The reader may also benefit from a starker take on the impact of technology, particularly, the Internet in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Overall, this informative, entertaining, thought provoking book forced me to rethink my views on "connectedness" and how much it should (or not) mean to me. The "sacrifices" one has to make to read this book (less Tweeting, fewer status updates on Facebook or fewer Instant Messenger pings)- are all well worth it. A great read.
Was Shakespeare an Early Adopter? June 6, 2010
takingadayoff (Las Vegas, Nevada)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
Do you check for email several times an hour? When you go to quickly look up something online, do you find that as long as you're there you may as well check the news, the stock market, and that blog you like? Do you get antsy if your smart phone is out of reach for more than a few minutes?
Join the club, my friend. I'm addicted and so are you. In a nutshell, author William Powers says we must use the internet, social networks, and cellphones to our advantage and resist becoming slaves to them.
Powers examines how we can be connected, without being too connected. Our addiction to being connected is robbing us of productivity and creativity. But we can't quit cold turkey, surely that would be just as bad, if it's even possible.
The book is quite entertaining and thought provoking, especially the end, where Powers outlines his own family's experiment in breaking away from the yoke of the internet. They use their laptops and smartphones during the week, but turn everything off on Friday night and leave it off until Monday morning. It's hard at first, but they are surprised at how quickly they adapt, and at how quickly their friends and colleagues adapt to their not being available every minute. They find that assignments and emails can almost always wait until Monday. They enjoy the time together as a family, and individually they get more done and manage their time better.
Powers uses history and philosophy to make his arguments and put things into perspective. The "Hamlet's Blackberry" of the title is what was called a writing table or table book and consisted of some plaster-covered pages bound in a pocket-sized book. A metal stylus came with it and was used to write down notes or lists. The pages could be sponged off like a slate and used over and over again. This was cutting edge technology in Shakespeare's time, a time before pencils and ballpoint pens were available.
The title originally comes from a long essay Powers wrote several years ago. In it, he looks at the evolution and future of paper. In this book, he's expanded the discussion to connectedness, which is why the book was to be titled Disconnectopia, but I think Hamlet's Blackberry is more inviting and memorable.
Unplug and ENJOY! August 17, 2010
MommaMia (NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this book in a few days. It was well thought out and really got me thinking. I believe that we are so very connected now that for many of us, the thought of NOT having our gadgets is horrifying! I wish we had the internet, e-mail, cell phones and Facebook back when I was in college! I lost touch with so many of my high school friends, even my best friends were so busy and unreachable, we lost contact during crucial growing up periods. What I wouldn't have done to be able to text my best friend on my first nail biting day of college! However, technology has changed the way we view the world, how we function as a society, our priorities are so different now. I worry that the substance has gone out of our lives, and we are living and interacting with each other in a more superficial way. I strive for balance in my life, I enjoy technology, but try to keep it simple and hope I can teach my children to have balance as well.
This book sparked more than one coffee house discussion about our society, our values and where we are headed as human beings. I couldn't recommend it higher, since any book that makes me think and sparks intriguing conversation is a 5 star book in my mind.
Unplug and enjoy!
Wonderful Book with Delightful Insights and Solutions August 25, 2010
David Macrea
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
William Powers has created a wonderful guide to living with these devices that we now worship in the digital age. He does not just bemoan these products as Nicholas Carr does in his book "The Shallows." Instead, the book instructs you on how to live with them realistically, rather then having them take over your life. I love this book and I hope that others will learn from it as I learned from it.
Incrementally Losing Ourselves in the Digital Age August 1, 2010
M. JEFFREY MCMAHON (Torrance, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It was almost unfortunate that I had just finished reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains before reading William Powers' Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age because these books have a lot of overlapping material, namely, that we our losing our capacity for prolonged engagement with other people and with reading and with life in general as our brains adapt to the rapid exponential growth of the digital age and all its concomitant technology and the way these technological communications over-burden us with "connectedness."
Having said that, William Powers has written a very readable, lucid manifesto, not a Luddite diatribe against the digital age, but a call for balance, using the sagacity of philosophers such as Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, Thoreau, and McLuhan--all who were responding to the way the soul must adapt appropriately to massive changes in the environment, changes that parallel our digital juggernaut.
When he's not discussing the expertise of these philosophers to bring balance to our digital lives, Powers is describing the way he finds balance in his own home. For example, his family has a Weekend Digital Sabbath where there's no Internet and he explains how this respite nurtures them and gives them peace of mind that extends to the busy digital workweek.
One of Powers' more salient arguments is that we have become addicted to being too busy and too connected to the point that we are terrified of "aloneness." This is good for the digital industry that profits from our addiction to their constant upgrades in digital connectedness. Instead of being terrified of our "aloneness," Powers wants us to re-learn what it means to be alone like in his chapter "The Spa of the Mind: Seneca on Inner Space" by showing how taking a break from our digital connections can be a vital part of human rejuvenation and creativity.
Powers does a good job of writing about aloneness without sounding precious or New Agey and his book, like The Shallows, is an important reminder about the need for balance as our digital age becomes more and more of a frenzy. Highly recommended.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
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