Reboot by Elaine Kasket

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

You are almost certainly reading this online, either on your computer or most likely now on a mobile device. Vast swathes of what we do have moved online or have a high technological aspect or element to it. The data that you provide to the companies and organisations that we interact with makes you a valuable part of their business.

Because technology is so pervasive, people have started to question is this actually good for us and our loved ones. I love technology, but I tend to think that the answer to this question now is no. The companies use various techniques to get us hooked and keep us interacting with their particular app. This is borderline psychological warfare on us the customer and at the moment, most people are losing…

Each chapter takes us through each stage of our lives from infancy, and early childhood to the tumult that is modern teenage years and onto our digital interactions as adults and the digital legacy that we will leave behind. In each chapter, Kasket gives a good overview of how technology has changed and the possibilities it offers and more importantly the warning signs that you need to be aware of.

This is a very thought-provoking book, She is not writing to make you feel really bad about all of your habits with regard to technology, but rather, just some of them…

The part that I was most startled by is the amount of technology that parents are expected to smother (not literally) their latest offspring in. We only had a baby monitor and didn’t use that for all of ours. It is also a warning about where we could be going, especially with regard to your digital legacy and the ghost in the machine that you will leave behind.

I did feel that it was missing a how-to-change section at the back. But she made it very clear in the conclusion that she wasn’t and didn’t want to do that. Rather she advocates her Technology Serenity Meditation:

May I have the serenity to accept what I cannot change about tech, the courage to change my use of it where I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

However, on reflection, I thought that the warnings in the book would be different for every reader of this and then they will have the knowledge to begin to make positive changes in their digital life. She does provide guidelines to help in this process. If you feel that you need to have a digital detox, then this is a good book to start that process with.