Friendship and Technology

Friendship and Technology

Author: Tiffany A. Petricini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-02

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000543226

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This book explores the nature of technology – participatory media in particular – and its effects on our friendships and our fundamental sense of togetherness. Situating the notion of friendship in the modern era, the author examines the possibilities and challenges of technology on our friendships. Taking a media ecology approach to interpersonal communication, she looks at issues around phenomenology, recognition of friends as unique, hermeneutics in a digital world and mediated communication, social dimensions of time and space, and communication ethics. Examining friendship as a communicative phenomenon and exploring the ways in which it is created, sustained, managed, produced, and reproduced, this book will be relevant to scholars and students of interpersonal communication, mediated communication, communication theory and philosophy, and media ecology. This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003188810/friendship-technology-tiffany-petricini


Friendship

Friendship

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2007-07-03

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 054752711X

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The amusing and erudite anatomy of modern friendship, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery. Is it possible to have too many friends? Is your spouse supposed to be your best friend? How far should you go to help a friend in need? And how do you end a friendship that has run its course? In a “smart, delightfully literate, and sophisticated” anatomy of friendship in all its contemporary guises, Joseph Epstein uncovers the rich and surprising truths about our favored companions (Los Angeles Times). Friendship illuminates those complex, wonderful relationships without which we’d all be lost. “Reading [Epstein] is like spending an evening being flatteringly entertained by the most interesting guy at the party.” —The Seattle Times “A brilliant and outspoken commentator . . . Epstein’s graceful style and irrepressible wit provide unalloyed pleasure.” —Chicago Tribune “Brisk and delightful.” —The Wall Street Journal


New Waves

New Waves

Author: Kevin Nguyen

Publisher: One World

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1984855255

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A wry and poignant debut novel about a man’s search for true connection that is “both knowing and cutting, a satire of internet culture that is also a moving portrait of a lost human being” (Los Angeles Times). “A knowing and thought-provoking exploration of love, modern isolation, and what it means to exist—especially as a person of color—in our increasingly digital age.”—Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—NPR, The New York Public Library, Parade, Kirkus Reviews Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company’s sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he’s nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup’s user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret—and wondering whether her death really was an accident. When Lucas hacks into Margo’s computer looking for answers, he is drawn into her private online life and realizes just how little he knew about his best friend. With a fresh voice, biting humor, and piercing observations about human nature, Kevin Nguyen brings an insider’s knowledge of the tech industry to this imaginative novel. A pitch-perfect exploration of race and startup culture, secrecy and surveillance, social media and friendship, New Waves asks: How well do we really know one another? And how do we form true intimacy and connection in a tech-obsessed world? Praise for New Waves “Nguyen’s stellar debut is a piercing assessment of young adulthood, the tech industry, and racism. . . . Nguyen impressively holds together his overlapping plot threads while providing incisive criticism of privilege and a dose of sharp humor. The story is fast-paced and fascinating, but also deeply felt; the effect is a page-turner with some serious bite.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A blistering sendup of startup culture and a sprawling, ambitious, tender debut.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


The Friend (National Book Award Winner)

The Friend (National Book Award Winner)

Author: Sigrid Nunez

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 073521946X

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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NAOMI WATTS “A beautiful book . . . a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love.” —Wall Street Journal “A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory . . . Nunez has a wry, withering wit.” —NPR “Dry, allusive and charming . . . the comedy here writes itself.” —The New York Times The New York Times bestselling story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.


Friendship, Robots, and Social Media

Friendship, Robots, and Social Media

Author: Alexis M. Elder

Publisher: Routledge Research in Applied Ethics

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9781138065666

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Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks and costs of face-to-face human interaction. But can they offer us real friendship? In this book, Alexis Elder outlines a theory of friendship drawing on Aristotle and contemporary work on social ontology, and then uses it to evaluate the real value of social robotics and emerging social technologies. In the first part of the book Elder develops a robust and rigorous ontology of friendship: what it is, how it functions, what harms it, and how it relates to familiar ethical and philosophical questions about character, value, and well-being. In Part II she applies this ontology to emerging trends in social robotics and human-robot interaction, including robotic companions for lonely seniors, therapeutic robots used to teach social skills to children on the autism spectrum, and companionate robots currently being developed for consumer markets. Elder articulates the moral hazards presented by these robots, while at the same time acknowledging their real and measurable benefits. In the final section she shifts her focus to connections between real people, especially those enabled by social media. Arguing against critics who have charged that these new communication technologies are weakening our social connections, Elder explores ways in which text messaging, video chats, Facebook, and Snapchat are enabling us to develop, sustain, and enrich our friendship in new and meaningful ways.


The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead

Author: Bill Gates

Publisher: Penguin Group

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13:

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In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring


To Be a Friend

To Be a Friend

Author: David E. Hunt

Publisher: Dundurn

Published: 2010-12-08

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 145972156X

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In todays busy world, we may fail to realize how important our need for friendship is. This book shows reader show to open the flow of friendship in their lives through activities and exercises that allow readers to discover what it is to be a friend.


Human Flourishing in a Technological World

Human Flourishing in a Technological World

Author: Jens Zimmermann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-09-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0192844016

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Human Flourishing in a Technological World addresses the question of human identity and flourishing in the light of recent technological advances. The chapters in Part I provide a philosophical-theological evaluation of changing major anthropological assumptions that have guided human self-understanding from antiquity to modernity: How did we move from a religious and mostly embodied anthropology of the person to the idea that we can upload human consciousness to computing platforms? How did we come to imagine that machines can actually be intelligent, or even learn in human fashion? Moreover, what metaphysical changes explain our mostly uncritical embrace of a technological determination of being and thus of how reality "works"? In Part II, the focus turns to the practical implications of our changing understanding of what it means to be human. Covering some of the most pressing current concerns about human flourishing, these chapters deal with the impact of technology on education, healthcare, disability, leisure and the nature of work, communication, aging, death, and the nature of wisdom for human flourishing in light of evolutionary biology. The volume includes the text of a lecutre by virtual reality engineer and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and a discussion between Lanier and other contributors.


Friendship Matters

Friendship Matters

Author: Karen Riddell

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1664147810

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Transform Your Life Through the Power of Friendship We live in a world where loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions, and millions of women are suffering. The good news? There is a proven antidote. In Friendship Matters, Karen Riddell presents a wealth of data unequivocally showing the power of friendship to dramatically improve the quality of every aspect of your life. While many women find making friends daunting, Friendships Matters is brimming with simple, specific steps and practical tools that will guide you to find, build, and maintain genuine friendships. Friendship Matters offers: —Five Steps to Preparing Mentally —Fifteen Surefire Places to Find Friends —Eight Techniques to Make the Most of Relationships —A Workbook to Create Your Personalized Plan Using her life lessons and interviews with thousands of women who shared their authentic experiences, Karen Riddell demonstrates just how easy it can be to positively transform your life.