Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream
A sociologist explores the many ways that digital natives' interaction with technology has changed their relationship with people, places, jobs, and other stabilizing structures and created a new way of life that is at odds with the American Dream of past generations. Digital natives are hacking the American Dream. Young people brought up with the Internet, smartphones, and social media are quickly rendering old habits, values, behaviors, and norms a distant memory—creating the greatest generation gap in history. In this eye-opening book, digital sociologist Julie M. Albright looks at the many ways in which younger people, facilitated by technology, are coming "untethered" from traditional aspirations and ideals, and asks: What are the effects of being disconnected from traditional, stabilizing social structures like churches, marriage, political parties, and long-term employment? What does it mean to be human when one's ties to people, places, jobs, and societal institutions are weakened or broken, displaced by digital hyper-connectivity? Albright sees both positives and negatives. On the one hand, mobile connectivity has given digital nomads the unprecedented opportunity to work or live anywhere. But, new threats to well-being are emerging, including increased isolation, anxiety, and loneliness, decreased physical exercise, ephemeral relationships, fragmented attention spans, and detachment from the calm of nature. In this time of rapid, global, technologically driven change, this book offers fresh insights into the unintended societal and psychological implications of lives exclusively lived in a digital world.
"1128169636"
Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream
A sociologist explores the many ways that digital natives' interaction with technology has changed their relationship with people, places, jobs, and other stabilizing structures and created a new way of life that is at odds with the American Dream of past generations. Digital natives are hacking the American Dream. Young people brought up with the Internet, smartphones, and social media are quickly rendering old habits, values, behaviors, and norms a distant memory—creating the greatest generation gap in history. In this eye-opening book, digital sociologist Julie M. Albright looks at the many ways in which younger people, facilitated by technology, are coming "untethered" from traditional aspirations and ideals, and asks: What are the effects of being disconnected from traditional, stabilizing social structures like churches, marriage, political parties, and long-term employment? What does it mean to be human when one's ties to people, places, jobs, and societal institutions are weakened or broken, displaced by digital hyper-connectivity? Albright sees both positives and negatives. On the one hand, mobile connectivity has given digital nomads the unprecedented opportunity to work or live anywhere. But, new threats to well-being are emerging, including increased isolation, anxiety, and loneliness, decreased physical exercise, ephemeral relationships, fragmented attention spans, and detachment from the calm of nature. In this time of rapid, global, technologically driven change, this book offers fresh insights into the unintended societal and psychological implications of lives exclusively lived in a digital world.
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Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream

Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream

Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream

Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream

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Overview

A sociologist explores the many ways that digital natives' interaction with technology has changed their relationship with people, places, jobs, and other stabilizing structures and created a new way of life that is at odds with the American Dream of past generations. Digital natives are hacking the American Dream. Young people brought up with the Internet, smartphones, and social media are quickly rendering old habits, values, behaviors, and norms a distant memory—creating the greatest generation gap in history. In this eye-opening book, digital sociologist Julie M. Albright looks at the many ways in which younger people, facilitated by technology, are coming "untethered" from traditional aspirations and ideals, and asks: What are the effects of being disconnected from traditional, stabilizing social structures like churches, marriage, political parties, and long-term employment? What does it mean to be human when one's ties to people, places, jobs, and societal institutions are weakened or broken, displaced by digital hyper-connectivity? Albright sees both positives and negatives. On the one hand, mobile connectivity has given digital nomads the unprecedented opportunity to work or live anywhere. But, new threats to well-being are emerging, including increased isolation, anxiety, and loneliness, decreased physical exercise, ephemeral relationships, fragmented attention spans, and detachment from the calm of nature. In this time of rapid, global, technologically driven change, this book offers fresh insights into the unintended societal and psychological implications of lives exclusively lived in a digital world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781633884441
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Publication date: 04/16/2019
Pages: 368
Sales rank: 1,080,791
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Julie M. Albright, PhD, is a sociologist specializing in digital culture and communications. She is a lecturer in the Applied Psychology and Engineering Departments at the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Albright's research has focused on the growing intersection of technology and social/behavioral systems. She was the co-principal investigator and project lead for the behavioral component of a $121 million smart-grid demonstration project with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the USC Information Sciences Institute, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and UCLA, which was funded by the US Department of Energy. She has also been a research associate with eHarmony. In addition, Dr. Albright has served as a peer reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council, and a variety of professional publications. The author of a number of book chapters and multiple peer-reviewed articles, she has also given talks for major data-center and energy conferences , including SAP for Utilities, IBM Global , DatacenterDynamics, and the Department of Defense. She has appeared as an expert in such national media as the Today show, CNN, NBC Nightly News, CBS, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, and many others.

Read an Excerpt

From the INTRODUCTION
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Left to Their Own Devices"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Julie M. Albright.
Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Foreword Thomas Dolby 9

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction 13

New York City, Mid-Morning. The Uptown 5 from Brooklyn 13

1 Silicon Valley: The Hacker Hotel 20

2 St. Barts, the Untethered Workforce, and "Microlives" 24

Triad of Technological Immersion 30

Chapter 1 Becoming Tethered: The American Dream 35

May 8, 1945. 10 Downing Annex, London 35

The Turning Point 41

New York, Cafe Zanzibar 41

Keeping Up 43

The Golden Age of the American Dream 45

The Wolves of Wall Street and the Fall of the American Dream 51

The Pull Factor of the American Dream 55

Chapter 2 Synchronization And Harmonization 61

Synchronization and Harmonization 68

Tne Six Emerging Values of the Untethered 73

1 Plug Life: The Desire for a Mediated World 73

2 Experiences versus Acquisitions 74

3 Transactors versus Owners 76

4 Don't Care How, I Want It Now (or How Veruca Salt of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Was Just ahead of Her Time) 78

5 Green Is Good 79

6 Customizable World 81

The End of Trust and the Emergence of the Dark Army 83

Chapter 3 The Untethered Adult 95

Greenwich Village, New York City 95

Untethered Relationships: "Because Choice" 105

The Internet as Other 106

Reshaping the American Dream 109

The Singularity Meets Her 115

Chapter 4 Growing Up Digital 121

Living in the Now 130

Digital Dating: Teenage Wasteland 133

You Are Valid 136

Externality and Chasing Likes 140

Unintentionally Exposed 143

Imaginary Friends 147

Chapter 5 Your Brain On Digital 151

January 14, 1967. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 151

Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York 156

Recoding Our Operating Systems 159

The Sound of Silence 163

The No Latency Life 168

Blurring Map and Territory Online 172

The Virtual Mirror 173

The Empathy Gap 177

Tools 'R' Us? 179

Chapter 6 Untethered From Nature 183

"The McRib Is Back!" 183

America's Best Idea 193

The Fountain of Life 198

InstaNature, or the Mediated Sublime 203

Fake Nature 208

Reconnecting with Nature 211

Rebalancing Nature and Culture 217

Chapter 7 The Untethered Worker 223

The Platform Economy, Patchwork Careers, and the End of Retirement 227

The Untethered Workplace 238

The Rise of the Fake Workforce 241

The Untethered Economy 249

Chapter 8 Untethered From The Body 259

New York City, Upper East Side. The Rectory 259

Civilizing the Body 264

Body Language in a Disembodied World 271

Digital Impacts on Analog Bodies 279

High Tech/High Touch 282

Chapter 9 The Untethered World 291

Our Increasingly Untethered World 299

The Digital Panopticon 302

Powering the Untethered World 307

The Upsides of an Untethered World 309

1 Global Learning, Philanthropy, and Employment 309

2 Citizen Journalism 310

3 Global Citizenship 312

Notes 319

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