Overview

Human beings have taken one thing for granted since our earliest days: we are bodily creatures dealing with one another on a face-to-face basis. The internet has shattered this fundamental feature of human existence. We are suddenly living our lives in two worlds at once--shifting endlessly from virtual to physical reality as we reach out to others. Worse yet, we are developing different personal identities in our two worlds. We say and do things in virtual reality that flatly contradict our face-to-face commitments to family, friends, and fellow-workers--and vice versa. The Postmodern Predicament explores these dilemmas at each phase of the life cycle, beginning at the moment a young child picks up a cell phone. The existentialist tradition of the twentieth century provides a precious perspective on our postmodern dilemmas. Thinkers and doers like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre considered the fragmentation of modern life as a central source of contemporary anxieties. Like them, Ackerman views the challenges of the internet age as a political, no less than personal, problem--and proposes concrete reforms that that could mobilize broad-based support for democracy against demagogic assaults on its very foundations.

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Contributors include Bruce Ackerman, Jack M. Balkin, Tyler Cowen, Jon Elster, Noah Feldman, Tom Ginsburg, Jack Goldsmith, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Holmes, Aziz Huq, Timur Kuran, Martha Minow, Eric A. Posner, Samantha Power, Karen Stenner, Geoffrey R. Stone, David A. Strauss, Cass R. Sunstein, and Duncan J. Watts Jonathan Todd Ross, a graduate of the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, has narrated over 120 audiobooks across a wide variety of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, self-help, YA, biography and memoir, children's literature, and romance. He's won an Audie Award (Restart by Gordon Korman), received numerous YALSA and Earphone Awards (Swindle by Gordon Korman, Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger, and more), and made all of his middle school bullies regret every mean thing they ever said to him when he narrated Tom Brady's The TB12 Method. Jonathan loves narrating all genres, bringing the author's words to audio-life. Jonathan Todd Ross, a graduate of the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, has narrated over 120 audiobooks across a wide variety of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, self-help, YA, biography and memoir, children's literature, and romance. He's won an Audie Award (Restart by Gordon Korman), received numerous YALSA and Earphone Awards (Swindle by Gordon Korman, Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger, and more), and made all of his middle school bullies regret every mean thing they ever said to him when he narrated Tom Brady's The TB12 Method. Jonathan loves narrating all genres, bringing the author's words to audio-life.

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