Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

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One of Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025
From the author of The Shallows, a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society.

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 commentator on the human consequences of technology, Nicholas Carr reorients the conversation around modern communication, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about self-expression, free speech, and media democratization. He reveals how messaging apps strip nuance from conversation, how “digital crowding” erodes empathy and triggers aggression, how online political debates narrow our minds and distort our perceptions, and how advances in AI are further blurring the already hazy line between fantasy and reality. Even as Carr shows how tech companies and their tools of connection have failed us, he forces us to confront inconvenient truths about our own nature. The human psyche, it turns out, is profoundly ill-suited to the “superbloom” of information that technology has unleashed.

With rich psychological insights and vivid examples drawn from history and science, Superbloom provides both a panoramic view of how media shapes society and an intimate examination of the fate of the self in a time of radical dislocation. It may be too late to change the system, Carr counsels, but it’s not too late to change ourselves.

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Also by Nicholas Carr
Utopia Is Creepy compels us to question the technological momentum that has trapped us in its flow. “Resistance is never futile,” argues Carr, and this book delivers the proof. The Shallows has become a foundational book in one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day. The Big Switch makes a simple and profound statement: Computing is turning into a utility, and the effects of this transition will ultimately change society as completely as the advent of cheap electricity did.

What Readers Say
“By turns wry and revelatory, and occasionally maddening, Carr succeeds at shaking the reader out of screen-zombie complacency.” —Discover Magazine “A modern classic of internet criticism.” —Quartz “Carr’s prose is elegant, and he has an exceptional command of the facts. He serves a varied menu of the ways that technology has failed us, and in every instance he is not only persuasive but undoubtedly right.” —Daniel Levitin, Wall Street Journal “Mr. Carr’s provocations are destined to influence CEOs and the boards and investors that support them as companies grapple with the constant change of the digital age.” —Wall Street Journal

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (January 28, 2025)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324064617
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324064619
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches

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