Very rarely do I get this excited about a book; only on a few occasions have I read something that made my head explode, providing the glue to pull together tons of seemingly random rants and thoughts.

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget is one of those books.

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, but already my brain is spinning with thoughts and ideas. It would be easy to sprint through it. The format, a series of very short but idea dense essays, and it being only 200 pages long could make it a fast read. But I feel I'd be doing myself a disservice if I did not read it slowly, let my mind linger on the ideas, spend the time to really think as I read.

In a way, that seems to be the point of the book. The digital world is leading to a change in how we view reality; how we view ourselves; how we view being human. Many of these changes are not challenged, we take them for granted; we accept that this is just the way things are in the wired age.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be writing a number of posts that tangent from ideas brought up in the book. The thoughts Jaron put to paper have inspired me, helped me to start to clearly outline details about various things that have been annoying me for a long time.

The sig at the end of all my emails used to say "People are intelligent, Machines are tools," and I think I might just start using that phrase again. It really does sum up my love/hate relationship with technology and tech culture.

But, instead of rushing to rant, I'm going to take Jaron's advice and counter the prevailing trivialization of thought by "Writing a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out."

Thanks to Jessamyn for sending the book to Jenna, and to Jenna for passing it on to me.
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Today's photo is of a kite eating tree in the East River Park.