These thinkers, spanning philosophy, media theory, fiction, and ecology, converge on a single, urgent theme: technology quietly reshapes how we perceive, training us away from depth, presence, and the living world.
"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it."
~ Max Frisch, Homo Faber (1957)
"The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts. Rather, they alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance."
~ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
"Take care what technologies you use, because your consciousness will, over time, come to be shaped like those technologies."
~ Johann Hari, Stolen Focus (2022)
"By connecting us to a symbolic elsewhere, the smartphone exiles us from the here and now."
~ Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage (2014)
"The newspaper reader's attention extends only to what is near. It shrinks to mere curiosity... The modern reader has lost the long, slow, lingering gaze..."
~ Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narration (2024)
"We have to love technology enough to describe it accurately. And we have to love ourselves enough to confront technology's true effects on us."
~ Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (2011)
"Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart."
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)