The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper-both as individuals and as a society. Thompson shows that every technological innovation-from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph-has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. But as in the past, we adapt-learning to use the new and retaining what's good of the old. Thompson introduces us to a cast of extraordinary characters who augment their minds in inventive ways. Thompson harnesses the latest discoveries in social science to explore how digital technology taps into our long-standing habits of mind-pushing them in powerful new directions.
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