Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

A celebrated interpreter of the impact of technology on human life, Nicholas Carr guides the reader through the dark trends that have shadowed the development of each new communication technology, from the way telegrams disrupted diplomacy, to the way radio aided autocrats, to the division caused by the Facebook feed to the way AI has started to blur reality. With vivid examples from history, science, and politics, Superbloom unmasks a fundamental flaw in our perception of, and revolutionizes our understanding of, how media shapes society. It may be too late to curb the “superbloom” of information, but it’s not too late to change ourselves.