Future Minds: How the Digital Age Is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters, and What We Can Do about It

We are getting both smarter AND more stupid at the same time. We are getting better at thinking quickly but worse at thinking things through properly. We are good at the fast and thin but bad at the slow and deep. Can something as seemingly innocent as a mobile phone or a Google search really change how we think and act? We are now so connected through digital networks that we are developing a culture of rapid response with no time to think properly and reflect. We have become so obsessed with asking whether something can be done that we have left no time to consider whether it should. Moreover, the digital age is chipping away at our ability to concentrate. We are therefore in danger of developing a new generation that has plenty of answers, but few good questions. Richard Watson asks one vital question: what can we do about it? From the author of the bestselling Future Files, this is a book about work, education, time, space, books, baths, sleep, music and the war to reclaim the time and space to 'deep think'. For anyone interested in unleashing the extraordinary potential of the human mind, Future Minds will make you think about such things as constant partial stupidity, the benefits of boredom, the rise of the screenager, and the myth of multi-tasking. Finally, it discusses what we can do to improve the quality of our thinking and strike a balance between analogue and digital, physical and virtual, ancient and modern.

About Richard Watson