Coming in January 2025, Nicholas Carr’s Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart is a searching, searing exploration of the way social media has warped our sense of self and society.

Ever since the great Enlightenment philosophers heralded a “Republic of Letters,” 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 more efficient, Carr argues, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

With vivid examples from history, science, and politics, Superbloom reveals how ill suited the human psyche is to the hyperkinetic exchanges of messages that now define our lives and relationships. It’s easy to blame Silicon Valley for the problems social media has produced. But the real source of the problems, Carr suggests, lies within us—in our very nature. Only by accepting our complicity can we hope to escape the informational superbloom that now overwhelms us.

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