The Frailest Thing: Ten Years of Thinking About the Meaning of Technology

by L.M. Sacasas

100 dispatches spanning a decade of thinking and writing about how technology sustains, mediates, and conditions our experience. Prominent themes include the relationship of technology to politics, memory and time, ethics, and the experience of the self.

Genres: Technology, Philosophy, Nonfiction

414 pages, ebook

Reviews

[Andrew Kondraske · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of blog posts and essays written over the course of around a decade in the heart of the social media era. Many of the pieces have a timeliness to them, referring to other journalistic pieces or controversies from a particular moment, so reading them now generates a strange, alienating effect. It's not that they are outdated as much that in many cases the dire augury has long since been realized and we have assimilated its consequences.

The book was published before the emergence of the LLM era, so there is little about AI and in particular of our current mode of interaction with it. But I think the chief achievement here is the way the author gives us potential frameworks for judging and grappling with future technologies. The bibliography of references to other thinkers about technology across previous eras alone is worth it.

[Will Sewell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Packs great insights all the way through, but definitely would have benefited from some polish and editing.