The Perils of Peak Attention
Two new books assess the quality of our digital lives: How do we shake off the village when we carry the world in our pocket?
“I am alarmed,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in “Walking,” his 1862 essay, “when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.” The point of his saunter had been to “forget all my morning occupations, and my obligations to society.” Alas: “It sometimes happens I cannot easily shake off the village.” His thoughts were elsewhere. With a gentle lashing of self-reproach, he asks: “What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”