Read our sample translation of Is Anybody There?
About the book
We text, email, google, post pictures on Instagram and tweet all day long. Meanwhile we spend more time on Facebook than we do eating. A growing body of research shows that excessive smartphone use is not only bad for our concentration, but also our stress levels and it even changes our brains. Stronger still: there are an increasing number of indications that our smartphone behaviour has all the characteristics of a collective addiction. In Is Anybody There?, NRC-journalist Wouter van Noort investigates his own smartphone use and how that behaviour influences his life, work and relationships. He also speaks with intellectuals in the fields of psychology, economics and technology and visits the most powerful tech companies in the world to try and figure out how exactly the smartphone intervenes in our relationships, our work—our happiness. This is a personal quest after the way in which the smartphone is changing our lives.
