Digitally enlightened reading: "How to Thrive in the Digital Age" by Tom Chatfield

It is unreasonable, a contradiction in terms actually, to expect serendipity. So when, after an interval of only two weeks, I again stepped into the Foyles at St Pancras station, it was with the sensation of making unreasonable demands on Providence.


And thus it seemed to be. I browsed the books on the front shelves, cleverly arranged in serendipity-enhancing categories (top ten, Chris' picks, best of British, new releases, why not?,  etc.) and though many titles caught my eye, and encouraged me to dip in here and there, I concluded that I was wrong to force the issue, thought of the backlog of heavy tomes awaiting me back home, and moved on...


... just as far as a nearby special display featuring the new "School of Life" series of books, edited by star philosopher Alain de Botton. These plain but mulicoloured books go by such intriguing titles as "How to Change the World", How to Worry Less about Money", How to Think More about Sex", How to Stay Sane", "How to Find Fulfilling Work" and, the one which caught and retained my eye, "How to Thrive in the Digital Age". Three minutes later, it was bought. Just under three hours later, as the Eurostar rolled into Brussels, it was also read. Serendipity Strikes Again!


I don't usually like life manuals and self-help books. My ventures in this branch of reading have taught me that they are usually, at best, an overly-prescriptive magazine article length idea stretched tediously to the length of a book. This is probably unfair. For one thing, the sample is small, because I usually avoid them. (I probably need a life-manual to correct me on this point.)


So it's just as well that this book is not really such a self-help book, or, if it is, that is so in a rather different way. According to the blurb on the series printed inside the cover: "The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life's big questions ... We don't have all the answers, but we will direct you towards a variety of useful ideas - from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts - that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish and console." I liked that. "Useful" ideas! - classic British anti-intellectual intellectual understatement.


What also appealed to me is something I have been thinking about professionally (in fact, it was essentially what I had been in London to do), the notion that thriving in the digital age is indeed one of "life's big questions". I can imagine many people objecting deeply to that notion, others barely pausing over it, the difference being mainly generational. Once you've read this book, however, I doubt anyone, even in the former group, would be in much doubt that digital technology is changing our lives in a profound way, affecting the very nature of the human animal.


It's a disturbing thought, one indeed which disturbs the author, Tom Chatfield, who strikes an open, enthusiastic, but at the same time, sceptical and prudent tone in the book. His thesis - in fact his observation - is that digital technology is indeed changing what human beings are and how they operate. He does not necessarily object to this, in fact treats it as a given, but offers many thoughts on how we must develop strategies to take the best it has to offer us, while ensuring that it doesn't also stand in the way of us getting the best out of ourselves.


The outcome is a very sensible, deeply humane reflection on the state of being human in the new world of all-pervasive digital technology. Much of this is based on an important, obvious but frequently forgotten, insight, namely that these technologies are themselves the product of humanity, and need to be perceived and dealt with as we would deal with the human world. He already sees this process in play in the evolution of the internet, with social media representing the reimposition of human logic (and illogic) on a previously pitilessly machine-based system.


The observations, insights and examples come thick and fast. My copy of this book is - most unusually for me - full of pencil markings in the margin next to some telling point. (Admittedly, this is also because I have to make a presentation later this week in which I am supposed to explain "my world" to colleagues working in a very different one and felt they might enjoy observations like:


We are entering a place where human nature remains the same, but where the structures shaping it are alien.

or

For a generation of so-called digital natives, a mobile phone is often the first thing you touch in when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you touch when you go to bed at night

or

Time away from digital media is not only no longer our default state; it is also something we cannot experience without explicitly aiming to do so.

or

A new kind of politics ... has emerged over the last few decades: one predicated on the viral spread of ideas and ideologies, and on forms of political action conducted more like franchises than traditional, top-down party operations.

or

There's a strong case to be made for the study and debate of digital media to be a compulsory part of the world's education systems, alongside literacy, numeracy and science.

and so on...


Chatfield is no luddite, but nor is he an uncritical, wide-eyed techno-enthusiast. This is a book for people who may love their iPads but still don't necessarily believe it's a good thing for their kids to spend whole days in front of video games, for those who realise they have been hugely empowered by the internet, but still wonder how much they are losing at the same time, for those who have found new channels for their creativity thanks to the machine, but still believe that creativity has to go offline sometimes to stay fully intact. In other words, it's a book for me and anyone else who recognises themselves at all somewhere in that.


Recommendation? Perhaps this book is for the in-betweeners: too young not to care, too old to be "so-called digital natives". If that's you, try it.