The End of Absence

Author: Michael John Harris
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698150589
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet. What does this unavoidable fact mean? Those of us who have lived both with and without the crowded connectivity of online life have a rare opportunity. We can still recognize the difference between Before and After. We catch ourselves idly reaching for our phones at the bus stop. Or we notice how, midconversation, a fumbling friend dives into the perfect recall of Google. In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Michael Harris argues that amid all the changes we're experiencing, the most interesting is the end of absence-the loss of lack. The daydreaming silences in our lives are filled; the burning solitudes are extinguished. There's no true "free time" when you carry a smartphone. Today's rarest commodity is the chance to be alone with your thoughts. Michael Harris is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Western Living and Vancouvermagazines. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

The End Of Absence

Author: Michael Harris
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443426296
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
Only one generation in history (ours) will experience life both with and without the Internet. For everyone who follows us, online life will simply be the air they breathe. Today, we revel in ubiquitous information and constant connection, rarely stopping to consider the implications for our logged-on lives. Michael Harris chronicles this massive shift, exploring what we’ve gained—and lost—in the bargain. In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Harris argues that our greatest loss has been that of absence itself—of silence, wonder and solitude. It’s a surprisingly precious commodity, and one we have less of every year. Drawing on a vast trove of research and scores of interviews with global experts, Harris explores this “loss of lack” in chapters devoted to every corner of our lives, from sex and commerce to memory and attention span. The book’s message is urgent: once we’ve lost the gift of absence, we may never remember its value.

Absence of Mind

Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300166478
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.

Truth and the Absence of Fact

Author: Hartry Field
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199241716
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
Hartry Field presents a selection of thirteen essays on a set of related topics at the foundations of philosophy; one essay is previously unpublished, and eight are accompanied by substantial new postscripts.Five of the essays are primarily about truth, meaning, and propositional attitudes, five are primarily about semantic indeterminacy and other kinds of 'factual defectiveness' in our discourse, and three are primarily about issues concerning objectivity, especially in mathematics and in epistemology. The essays on truth, meaning, and the attitudes show a development from a form of correspondence theory of truth and meaning to a more deflationist perspective.The next set of papers argue that a place must be made in semantics for the idea that there are questions about which there is no fact of the matter, and address the difficulties involved in making sense of this, both within a correspondence theory of truth and meaning, and within a deflationary theory. Two papers argue that there are questions in mathematics about which there is no fact of the mattter, and draw out implications of this for the nature of mathematics. And the final paper arguesfor a view of epistemology in which it is not a purely fact-stating enterprise.This influential work by a key figure in contemporary philosophy will reward the attention of any philosopher interested in language, epistemology, or mathematics.

In the Absence of Men

Author: Philippe Besson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446485293
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Book Description
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LIE WITH ME It is the summer of 1916 and, with German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war. For Vincent, the sixteen-year-old son of a prestigious family, the tranquillity of the city sits at odds with the salons and soirees he attends. But, after an electrifying encounter with the enigmatic writer, Marcel P, draws Vincent’s desires out into the light, his ever-riskier liaisons with a young solider begin to shape Vincent’s future. Translated by Frank Wynne 'A short, bold and original novel which beautifully captures the romance and amorality of gilded youth' Independent Elegant novellas-in-translation, VINTAGE EDITIONS celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

Absence of Grace ( Love Story, Multicultural, Alaska, Contemporary Women's Fiction)

Author: Ann Warner
Publisher: Ann Warner
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
The memory of an act committed when she was nineteen weaves a dark thread through Clen McClendon's life. It is a darkness Clen ignores until the discovery of her husband's infidelity propels her on a quest for redemption and forgiveness. Her journeying is providing few answers and peace remains elusive, even during the time she spends in an abbey. But when Clen makes a decision that is both desperate and random to go to Wrangell, Alaska, she meets Gerrum Kirsey and learns that choices are never truly random and they always have consequences.

Things Are Going Great In My Absence: How To Let Go And Let The Divine Do The Heavy Lifting 12th Anniversary Edition

Author: Lola Jones
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1732399409
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
Things Are Going Great In My Absence is not an ordinary book. It's an astonishing, mind-blowing, life-changing experience, due to the vortex of Energy, Light, and Divine Intelligence it guides you into, step by enjoyable step. Divine Openings realigns you with that organized field of resonance that carries you along in the Flow Of Life. It helps you let in more of the Grace that's been raining on you all along. When you're not able to let in that Grace, you can feel like you're dying of thirst in a rainstorm. Things Are Going Great In My Absence is so powerful and effective, it spread to over 150 countries by word of mouth, before even being in bookstores. We know it might sound too good to be true--but it does work in your life if you simply read it, let it in, and stick to it.

An Epidemic of Absence

Author: Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439199396
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
A controversial, revisionist approach to autoimmune and allergic disorders considers the perspective that the human immune system has been disabled by twentieth-century hygiene and medical practices.

The Absence of Sparrows

Author: Kurt Kirchmeier
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 031645091X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Stranger Things meets The Stand in this haunting coming-of-age novel about a plague that brings the world to a halt -- and the boy who believes that his town's missing sparrows can save his family. In the small town of Griever's Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in. Old Man Crandall is the first to change -- human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it. With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town's missing sparrows will return with everyone's souls before the glass plague takes them away forever.

The Absence

Author: Martin Stiff
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 1782765948
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 559

Book Description
Strange occurrences, hidden pasts, and deeply-buried truths: The Absence will keep you gripped to the shocking finish! 1946. As a coastal village in southern England struggles to recover from the losses of war, it is rocked by the return of a man long hoped dead: the disfigured Marwood Clay. In a place where everybody hides a guilty past, and unspeakable past crimes lurk just beneath the surfaceÉ what terrible secrets has this exile brought back with him? And what happened during his absence? While Marwood struggles to rebuild his life, newcomer Dr. Robert Temple builds a strange house for himself, on the hill overlooking the town. Clay is consumed by a nightmarish past he cannot remember, Temple by visions of a future he cannot prevent. And then a young boy vanishes on Christmas DayÉ