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An Ars Technica Holiday Reading Title of 2021 A lively and approachable meditation on how we can transform our digital lives if we let a little Nietzsche in.Who has not found themselves scrolling endlessly on screens and wondered: Am I living or distracting myself from living? In Emergency, Break Glass adapts Friedrich Nietzsche's passionate quest for meaning into a world overwhelmed by "content."Written long before the advent of smartphones, Nietzsche's aphoristic philosophy advocated a fierce mastery of attention, a strict information diet, and a powerful connection to the natural world. Drawing on Nietzsche's work, technology journalist Nate Anderson advocates for a life of goal-oriented, creative exertion as more meaningful than the "frictionless" leisure often promised by our devices.



About the Author

Nate Anderson

Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica, where he writes about technology law and policy. His work has also been published in outlets like The Economist and Foreign Policy. His first computer was an Atari 600XL with a tape drive and so little memory that it could be filled just by typing in programs from magazines.



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