Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

Pulitzer Prize finalist Carr (The Shallows) frames his argument for changing one’s media consumption around the phenomena of the superbloom; he suggests that experiencing natural phenomena like the superbloom in real life is different than experiencing nature as a virtual event. To explain the difference and disconnect, he details the history of personal privacy amid technological advances, citing the Olmstead Act, the Secrecy of Correspondence Doctrine, and the Telecomm Act of 1996 as pivotal moments when humans adjusted their behavior to accommodate technology. The emergence of Facebook’s news feed, he argues, was the pivotal moment when expectations of content, personal privacy, and connectivity avalanched into the content collapse and feeling of overwhelm that users are now experiencing. After exploring the envy and lack of empathy that social media can elicit, the book’s focus turns to AI and humanity’s unpreparedness for its potential; this section is the book’s strongest. Carr’s conclusion has a few ideas for changing media habits, but they’re immersed in regret for the 1990s, when humans squandered their chance to influence then-emerging social media.