Howard Axelrod

The Stars in Our Pockets Howard Axelrod

What shapes our sense of place, our sense of time, and our memory? How is technology changing the way we make sense of the world and of ourselves? For the first time in human history, we're effectively living in two environments at once--the natural and the digital--and many of the traits that help us online don't help us offline, and vice versa. Howard Axelrod explores the human brain's impressive but indiscriminate ability to adapt to its surroundings. The Stars in Our Pockets is a portrait of, as well as a meditation on, what Axelrod comes to think of as inner climate change. Just as we're losing diversity of plant and animal species due to the environmental crisis, so too are we losing the diversity and range of our minds due to changes in our cognitive environment.