The big disconnect : technology in the age of loneliness / Giles Slade.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Immortality and Free Will.-- Breadcrumbs. Incunabula ; Self-serve ; Selling robots ; Closed cars ; Radio's "free" content ; Screens ; Stars. -- Wired for Sound. Music is technology ; Distance grooming ; Palliative music ; Accessibility in American music ; Factory whistle, factory noise ; Stars, music, and personality ; Canned music ; Solitary (acousmatic) listening. -- Trusting Machines. Trust in traditional societies ; Modern trust ; Modern alternatives to trust: professionalization ; Modern alternatives to trust: standardization ; Modern alternatives to trust: reliable machines ; National crisis of trust ; The arts and crafts of machines ; World without Oxytocin -- Machines as Friends.

Tablets, smart phones, and social networks all promise better opportunities to connect and stay connected. Yet what they really do is replace face-to-face interactions and disguise our growing inability to trust others. According to recent surveys, at any given moment, sixty million Americans, 20 percent of the population, feel sufficiently isolated to report that loneliness is a major source of unhappiness. Have we arrived at a new kind of consciousness in which electronic interfaces receive most of our attention to the detriment of real interpersonal communication and empathy? In this book the author offers a bracing look at an America where intimacy with machines is increasingly replacing mutual human intimacy. In a sweeping overview that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the present, he reveals how consumer technologies changed from analgesic devices that ameliorated the loneliness of a newly urban generation in the Gilded Age to prosthetic machines that act as substitutes for companionship in contemporary America. Mining insights from neuroscience, the author delves deeply into the history of this transformation, showing why Americans use certain technologies to mediate their connections with other human beings instead of seeking out face-to-face contacts. In a final investigative section, he describes ways in which some people are bucking the trend by consciously including interpersonal strategies that build empathy, community, and mutual acceptance. This interdisciplinary synthesis provides many insights into our increasingly artificial relationships and a vision of how we can rediscover genuine community and human empathy.