Robert Hassan believes that we are ‘trapped in a digital prison of constant distraction’, and that the time we spend on screens is draining more from us than hours in the day.
So what happens when we remove technology altogether?
In order to break free from the ‘digital prison’, Hassan booked a passage on a container ship and spent five weeks travelling from Melbourne to Singapore – disconnected and essentially alone. In this space of isolation and reflection, he was able to reconnect with lost memories and interrogate the temporality of time.
‘Take your eyes from the screen and look around you, in the train, in traffic, in the street and in the classroom. And think of all those uncountable others in rooms in homes and offices, who just sit there, connected but alone.’
Professor Robert Hassan researches and teaches in the Media and Communications program at the University of Melbourne. Uncontained is a must-read for anyone who feels the encroachment of the digital on their inner world.
$32.95 (incl. GST)
Format: PB
Extent: 300
ISBN: 9780648209614
Release date: 29 July 2019
Reviews
‘A real-world adventure, and a deft combination of ethnography, memoir and scholarship lightly applied …’
—Professor Stephen Muecke (University of Adelaide)
‘Immensely readable, interesting and funny … Hassan’s theoretical insights on technology and its consequences for our perception of time are important and relevant to anyone (which is everyone) living in our digital age.’
—Jeremy George, ‘What we’re reading’, Readings