Ross Parker (Coming soon)
How did we end up with a device in every pocket, a screen in every hand? How did childhood change from a time of relative freedom, to a period of electronic tethering? This book invites you to rethink the story of digital technology, and to ponder how we came to build a global machine that eats childhood. Written by Ross Parker, educator and technologist, and based on research, professional experience and personal anecdote, it raises questions around how we choose to raise and educate our young, and points to ways to live better in an age of ubiquitous devices.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and co-founder of the venerable Netscape web browser, quipped that “software is eating the world”. Writing on his corporate blog, he then noted that “this is a profoundly positive story for the American economy”. And what is good for the economy, we are told, must be good for us all.
Andreessen’s positive esteem for all things digital aligned perfectly with the spirit of the times, coming, as it did, at the height of early-21st century techno-utopianism. Silicon Valley, home of the digital revolution, had germinated in the fertile soil of post-1960s San Francisco. Deeply influenced by beat and hippie sensibilities, the Valley brought to digital technology strong undertones of mysticism, rebellion, progressivism and self-righteousness. Despite being home to nerds, geeks and other misfits, digital technology was cool, and it was revolutionising the world. In its wake it would bring us a civilisation that was more democratic, more equal, more efficient and more open. If only we could disrupt enough industries, and sell enough devices, we could build the perfect world.
And yet, despite this epic narrative, despite the great optimistic promise of liberation from the human condition, fault lines were visible even as Andreessen blogged. To the astute observer, signs of fractured focus, compulsive overuse, hostility towards “the other”, trolls, hackers, bad state actors, growing inequality and a shift to being “always on” were all red flags.
Today, in 2021, we seem to live in a world in which it is impossible not to stare at a screen. We work at screens, relax in front of screens and pacify our children with screens. There are screens on buses, screens on trains and screens on planes. There are screens in bus stops, on buildings, and in buildings. We need not worry that we will ever be too far from a screen, for we are now all in the habit of carrying a portable screen in our pockets or hands…at all times. In fact, one has to make a deliberate effort in order to entertain oneself in a non-screen-based manner, for the screens insistently beep and buzz at all hours in order to retain our attention.
Screens, it turns out, are not delivering what we had been promised. Rather than setting us free they have enslaved our minds, rather than making us knowledgeable they have made us distracted. Perhaps, we are coming to realise, having an insistent, inescapable, 24/7 popularity contest in your pocket is a bad idea.
This book offers a front row seat to the ways in which screens have distorted our culture, rewriting the rules of childhood along the way. Researchers have confirmed it, and the media are rapidly catching up. This is not a moral panic, but it is an invitation to think, a call to action. Do we want to allow screens to eat childhood, to eat our culture, or ought we choose a different course?
Of course, laying the blame for any complex phenomenon solely at the feet of a single cause would be unwise. And so, this book will seek to consider the many interrelated forces at play, in order to tease out the role played by digital technology in shaping the changes we are experiencing. It is this broader story that I seek to tell, through a consideration of childhood and culture, the impact that screens have, the road that led us here and, finally, where we might be headed.