Distraction: Mark Curtis

Posted: November 21st, 2011 | Author: Michael Courtenay | Filed under: Blogging, Favorite New Thought, From The Web, Media, Mobile Media, Television | Tags: Distraction, Letters-to-America, Mark Curtis, Mobile Media, Robert Putnam | 2 Comments »

It’s no secret – our love of the blogsphere – every now and then however, we stumble across bloggers that can ounly be described as standout! An example at hand is http://letterstoamerica.blogs.com/ Mark Curtis, author of ‘Distraction‘ has penned an uberool post on social theorist Robert Putnam.

Curtis is obsessed with what we can do with our mobile phones and the web, “it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, because so much is changing and so fast, we are distracted by it.” His book steps back to look at our use of new technology and draws some uncomfortable and challenging conclusions about what society may need to do to get the best, not the worst, out of the digital era.

Post Breakout: Despite the extraordinary and rapid advances made by the Internet and mobile telephony, television remains the most successful mass medium yet known to man. Yet it has had some powerful, and I believe detrimental effects on society.

Perhaps these are hard to see because at its best telly is, well, fun. After a hard day it is just so tempting to throw off your shoes, grab a drink and let the sofa take the tension, while TV takes care of your mind. It certainly doesn’t seem evil. How could we think ill of the technology that brought us the Clangers, Miss Piggy and Monty Python?

In 2000 American social theorist Robert Putnam published a remarkable and important book. The “Bowling Alone ” of its title refers to the collapse of bowling leagues in towns across America during the last 50 years, but Putnam is only using this as a metaphor for his central theory that social capital has declined drastically in the USA in the same period.

Read Curtis' Full Post: http://letterstoamerica.blogs.com

Check his Book: http://www.distraction.futuretext.com

[AMAZON]

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