Book

My main activity during my ESRC DTP Fellowship was to develop my PhD into a book. The book will combine ethnographic research with millennial memoir, and will focus on telling the stories that couldn’t make it into the thesis itself.

Under the canopy of towering redwood trees, I gathered with digital detoxers for dancing, ice breaker exercises, and forms of group therapy. We were taught how to become a “wizard” in order to control the weather with the power of our mind, and in an evening of deeply emotional silent meditation, dressed in white, we ceremoniously burned our “fears'' in the campfire. As someone who has always been tethered online, my ethnography was a jarring experience, and during these therapeutic rituals I was often relieved when I could retreat behind my notebook. At the same time, I understood how deeply detoxers craved meaning and connection, and how lost many of them felt in life. Technology was only the starting point in learning how detoxers navigated modern life; and having got to know them, I learned a lot about my own approach to technology too. How can we find peace in a modern, digital world? I don’t claim to have the answer, but this book will lay out a lot of the important questions.

Some books I have enjoyed recently: