The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

Staking a modest claim in areas explored at length by Nicholas Carr and James Gleick, Harris, a magazine journalist and author of the YA novel Homo, frets over what humanity is losing by tethering its work routines and leisure hours so closely to technology. Across nine sporadically engaging but meandering chapters, he asserts%E2%80%94but does not prove%E2%80%94that digital gadgetry is causing those with access to experience a downward qualitative difference in their lives. (As for the qualitative difference between, say, one schedule of television-watching and another of text-checking, the author does not provide comparative data.) In addition, he says the "straddle generation," who have experienced existence before and after the Internet, as well as those born later, are now plagued by the "end of absence," by which Harris appears to mean an inability to focus on a task such as daydreaming or reading without being distracted by texting and peeks at e-mails. Examining an assortment of interrelated subjects%E2%80%94from online dating to "crowdsourced culture" %E2%80%94the book serves adequately as an introductory survey of the questions it raises. Still, heavy reliance on personal anecdotes and an explicitly Couplandesque glossary suggests an author in the process of crafting a voice with something distinctive to say. Agent: Anne McDermid. (Aug.)