The Stars in Our Pockets

Human innovation in tech is changing the world around us in ways we often fail to perceive. But what of the changes that are happening inside of us?

Howard Axelrod spent two years living in solitude after a basketball accident left him blinded in one eye. In his memoir, The Point of Vanishing, he recounts his search for a means of orienting himself in the world. Now, Axelrod spins his personal philosophy out into the wider world, where technology is changing the nature of human consciousness faster than we can see it happening. He draws a parallel between the environmental crisis and a lesser-known, but equally pressing issue: as we lose the world around us, he argues, we are losing our interior worlds, too. We can't navigate without a GPS, we can't pay attention unless our attention is DEMANDED in all caps and moving pictures. We tap our phones 2,617 times a day, inadvertently deciding to rely on these devices instead of our minds to provide our lives with content and meaning. In the tradition of Leslie Jamison's Empathy Exams, Axelrod marshals cultural and theoretical ideologies to ask questions both personal and universal.