So Cool, So Digital, So Miserable

It's the time of year for taking stock. It's also the time for airing millennial hopes and anxieties. But rather than float utopian dreams or doomsday scenarios, let's state some facts -- and ask some questions.

Fact: We are living in an era of unprecedented value creation and innovation.

Question: If we're making so much progress, how do we account for so much fear of destruction? In 1992, 1,500 scientists, including most of the living Nobelists, signed a "Warning to Humanity." And two years later, 58 world academies of science released a similar document that warned that population growth, overconsumption, and economic expansion are destroying Earth's irreplaceable natural capital.

Fact: Americans have the highest standard of living on the planet, characterized by convenience and staggering abundance.

Question: If our quality of life is so evolved, why are so many people scrambling to simplify and downshift their lives? As much as 12% percent of the U.S. population has joined the "voluntary simplicity" movement. Americans are buying "simplicity" books by the millions and are moving to the country in droves.

Fact: We're living in an era of dizzying individual freedom, control, and choice. People have never been more free to invent the kind of life they want to lead; consumers have never had more information and direct access to companies.

Question: If things are so good, why do we feel so bad? Since the 1940s, worldwide rates of major depression have risen steadily in every age group. The United States has a higher rate of depression than that of almost any other country, and data show that as Asian countries Americanize, depression rates increase accordingly.

These are some of the simple facts -- and poignant questions -- at the heart of two important new books whose timing could not be better. In interlocking arguments, "High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning" (Broadway Books, $25) and "Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America" (Eagle Brook/William Morrow, $25) argue that the very forces providing the momentum behind the new economy are also producing cultural violence, environmental destruction, and widespread anomie. What's more, we're so caught up in the cycle of consumption that we've lost our free will: We watch the hit summer movie and then buy the laptop the hero used to outwit the bad guys; we upgrade to the newer, better gadget even when the old one works fine; we laugh when a laugh track tells us to.

It's a simple, graphic -- and persuasive -- argument, made even starker because it comes from such distinct voices. John Naisbitt has been a member of the techno-elite and a pioneering social forecaster since 1982, when he published "Megatrends." (He wrote "High Tech/High Touch" with his daughter, Nana Naisbitt, and Douglas Philips.) Kalle Lasn, author of "Culture Jam," also created Adbusters magazine (www.adbusters.org) and is the architect of a global network of artists, activists, writers, educators, and entrepreneurs he calls "culture jammers." Rather than millennial rants of frustrated Luddites, these push-back manifestos present a picture of the way we live with an activist spirit and a humanistic message.

Plugged In, Disconnected

Naisbitt and his coauthors take on our complex and unexamined relationships with a panoply of new technologies. Technology, says Naisbitt, has become the conversation in America. "We talk about television shows, media events, and Internet jokes as if they were our own personal stories," he says.

More than an obsession, Naisbitt argues, our relationship with technology has taken on the characteristics of an addiction. We confuse reality with life on the screens that pervade our lives: movie screens, TV screens, computer screens, Game Boy screens, personal electronic-organizer screens, cell-phone screens, call-screening screens. "Screens are everywhere," says Naisbitt. "They're in every setting, directing us, informing us, amusing us. And without our conscious awareness, they are shaping us."

Naisbitt's aim is not to trash technology but to lift our awareness of it, to "detoxify" our relationship with it, and to ground it in the "high touch" realm: the sweet, fresh face of a three-year-old girl, the smell of a hot bowl of soup, an idea that tickles your soul. Naisbitt decodes our interaction with technology through the unique human lenses of time, play, religion, and art. He starts off by asking, "What is the effect of surrounding ourselves with technology all day, every day, at home, at work, and in our cars, with no relief?" His answers are alarming.

One of technology's most alluring promises is the ability to save time -- to simplify our complex, hurried lives. Naisbitt argues that we've reached a point of diminishing returns with consumer technology. Paradoxically, "what promises to save us time consumes our time." We spend so much time upgrading, maintaining, and synchronizing our technology that we're always a frantic step behind in our obsession with productivity and efficiency.