Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain--and How to Fight Back

by Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever Narrated by Alex Salkever

Overview

Do you feel in control of your life or enslaved by your devices? Have you risked your life texting and driving? Do you sympathize with a test group of students who endured painful shocks rather than be separated from their phones?

Digital technology is wonderful, but it's making us miserable, say former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. There's a reason Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Guardian he won't let his nephew on social networks. We've become a nation of tech addicts-although it's not entirely our fault, and it is possible to enjoy the benefits of technology while taking our happiness back from the bots.

Wadhwa and Salkever describe the applied neuroscience techniques developers are using to make their products so insidiously habit-forming and, drawing on the latest research, detail the negative impact of technology in four key areas: love, work, play, and life. There are dozens of vivid examples. Online dating apps like Tinder encourage users to evaluate people like products, leading to superficial, unsatisfying relationships. Workers check their email an average of seventy-seven times a day, wreaking havoc on productivity. Children now spend nearly twice as much time playing inside with their screens as they do outside in the natural world-it is any wonder childhood obesity is a problem? The light from the devices so many of us look at right before we go to sleep suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone vital for sleep and healthy organ functioning.

But there's a way out. Wadhwa and Salkever lay out simple, common-sense ways to disrupt developers' efforts to get you hooked, including six simple questions to help you decide what role any given technology should play in your life. Ironically, they even describe some emerging technologies designed to give users more control. Get back to making technology serve you, not the other way around!

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

…an incisive, timely book that uncovers the dark side of technology and suggests how to use it mindfully.” 
—Foreword Review

“Wadhwa and Salkever have written a great book to help us understand our addiction to technology and suggest what we can do about it. They offer a menu of concrete steps we can take in our personal lives to use technology to our advantage without being controlled by it.” 
—Andres Oppenheimer, columnist for the Miami Herald, joint winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize, and author of Innovate or Die!

“This book hooks its readers even more than the addictive technologies it expertly critiques. Wadhwa and Salkever are not neo-Luddites hostile to technology but rather grand masters of its promise and problems. Chock-full of suggestions for how corporate titans, public officials, and the general public can regain control over their lives, this timely book is no simplistic finger-pointing scolding or dystopian rant but offers a road map to sensible constructive solutions.”
—Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies and Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management, Yale School of Management

“This book is a fascinating evidence-based read that highlights the negative effects of modern digital technology on our work and lives and suggests changes in the technology-human interface to improve our well-being. Every chapter has an example or scientific fact that will resonate with you as it did with me and ends with a path for controlling the technology rather than having technology control us. A must-read!”
—Richard Freeman, Ascherman Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Director, Science and Engineering and Workforce Project, National Bureau of Economic Research

“I love the convenience and feel empowered by the freedom tech provides. I cherish the proximity it brings to my family and friends. However, at times I find myself addicted to tech. Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever provide valuable insights and recommendations on how to achieve the delicate balance that will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.”
—Sophie V. Vandebroek, Chief Operating Officer, IBM Research

“This book should be called How to Survive the Future. Wadhwa and Salkever provide practical, actionable thoughts that can help you survive—and thrive—tomorrow and beyond.”
—Sree Sreenivasan, former Chief Digital Officer, New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Columbia University

AUGUST 2018 - AudioFile

Coauthor Alex Salkever narrates this timely audiobook in an uninflected manner. While he’s far from a dramatic reader, his earnest style suits the seriousness of the issues he raises. He is convincing. The authors share their personal stories, each in a kind of mea culpa for what inspired this project: email addiction leading to failing health for Wadhwa and a near disaster—screen reading while driving—for Salkever. The authors then take on a litany of problems—screen addiction, decline in exercise, sleep deprivation, loneliness—that are related to the massive time-suck of social media. They demonstrate that parents’ screen behavior contributes powerfully to teens’ tech addiction. They give thoughtful suggestions for modifying use and recommend apps to help. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171710965
Publisher:	Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date:	06/26/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos