Emily Gould Is Offering You the Red Pill

Former GalleyCat contributing editor Emily Gould has done more this summer than completing the essay collection she sold to Free Press. She’s also got a byline in the latest issue of Technology Review, discussing books about online culture. “Like an expatriate who reads every new novel that’s set in her homeland,” she writes, “I read books about the Internet to remember the time I spent working and living there, to contrast my memories with the authors’ impressions and see how well they hold up.”

Then she sets up a point/counterpoint between classic Walter Benjamin and cutting-edge Clay Shirky over whether today’s digital environment is really serving the good: “Maybe… social-media technologies are creating simulacra of social connection, facsimiles of friendship… moving heedlessly toward a future where the basic human social activities that these new technologies are modeled on—talking, being introduced to new people by friends—are threatened.” Finally, she encourages readers to experiment with dropping out of the social media scene until “until you start to see your world opening back up again.” Sounds tempting, doesn’t it?

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