Kent State professor and regular Cleveland Plain-Dealer contributor William Kist has one of the best reviews of The Distraction Addiction that I've read so far:
Pang, a “professional futurist” and former editor at Encyclopedia Britannica (talk about your conflicted resume), comes at techno-bashing from a different perspective than those doomsday scholars such as Sherry Turkle (“Alone Together”).
Rather than bemoan the new computer age as isolating us and dumbing down human civilization, Pang points out that it is our ability to make and use tools that makes us human. The reason we have succumbed to “monkey mind” in these digital times is that we have not mastered our technological tools; we’ve let them master us.
In seven chapters (“Breathe,” “Simplify,” “Meditate,” “Deprogram,” “Experiment,” “Refocus” and “Rest”), Pang gives advice to help our simian selves become masters of our domains. Providing an antidote to “monkey mind” has clearly become a mission for Pang — the 35 pages of endnotes alone demonstrate the breadth and depth of his interdisciplinary research into this cause.
Not many people zero in on the central argument about entanglement, so it's nice to see Kist put it front and center. And yes, it's a conflicted resume! He continues–
And, while this book does have kind of an annoying,
“Dr.-Pang-explains-it-all-for-you” tone, Pang’s strength is his ability
to weave together previously written-about ideas from such varied
sources as histories of science (e.g., Darwin’s daily walk) and Silicon
Valley propaganda (the “digital Sabbath”).
–though no reviewer should be surprised when a former Britannica editor explains (encyclospains? Britannisplains?) things in an annoying tone!