Hamlet's BlackBerry

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, critical bytes of information

stream through digital devices in your office, home, car, pocket, or purse.

Technology connects you to your colleagues, family, and friends

regardless of location all the time. Pretty great, right? Then why do we

feel increasingly anxious and distracted, often ignoring the very people

we're with to habitually (some would say, obsessively) check our e-mail or

Facebook accounts? Why does our relationship with technology feel like

an addiction?

In Powers's provocative and necessary book, this is a philosophical

problem:What do we do when we serve the tools meant to serve us?

What's the best way for us to live with technology so it benefits and adds

value to our lives, rather than controls us? Powers is no Luddite advocating

throwing out your cell phone; he's been seduced by technology's appeal

and utility. Hamlet's BlackBerry chronicles his personal journey to develop

a practical philosophy to wrest control of his life from a screen full of pixels,

agitation, and activity to a more thoughtful, creative abundance.

On his journey, Powers travels back in history with seven philosophers

who confronted surprisingly similar technological disruptions (and perceived

threats) in their own time: Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Hamlet (via

Shakespeare), Benjamin Franklin, Thoreau, and Marshall McLuhan.

Through his intelligent inquiry, Powers helps readers find their way to a

life of intention and depth, and a path back to peace.