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Review Quotes:
"Against Convenience is a wake-up call. Effort and friction aren't obstacles to a good life--they're essential to it."
-Jennifer Wallace, New York Times bestselling author of Mattering
"Living' ain't easy. Convenience gimmicks repress this truth, increase labor, and weaken vital connections. Gabe Bullard's rigorously researched and vibrantly written book exposes the ideology of frictionlessness and offers a blueprint for living deliberately, even if that's a little hard."
-Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy
"What's the real cost of ordering DoorDash again? Gabe Bullard's sharp and witty new book considers modern 'conveniences' like self-checkout, Uber, and the Starbucks app, what actually makes them possible--and why we're all the worse for their rise. You'll want to take a good long time reading this one."
--Brian Merchant, author of Blood In The Machine
"Convenience has become one of the defining values of our age. In this smart, engaging book, Gabe Bullard reveals what it costs us--and why a little friction may be exactly what we need."
--Dana Thomas, author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
Publisher Marketing:
From seasoned journalist and critic Gabe Bullard, a provocative exploration of modern "convenience culture" - and how we can resist and reclaim our time, resilience, and happiness, for fans of How to Do Nothing and The Courage to Be Disliked.
We live in a world addicted to convenience. Countless tools and innovations fill our daily lives, allowing us to swipe, tap, click, and subscribe without a second thought: ordering groceries to your door, calling an Uber for a ride up the block, or scrolling the endless songs and TV shows at our fingertips. In theory, convenience can leave us with more energy and time to do what we want to do, save us resources, and complete tasks with less effort than before.
But what if we aren't actually accomplishing any of those things?
Expert journalist Gabe Bullard reveals an entire hidden architecture behind the ubiquitous modern-day services and technologies that allegedly make our lives easier. At best, many of them aren't actually convenient at all, and at their worst, they compromise our physical and mental well-being and lead to shallower relationships, lower quality life and art, and a degraded planet.
But we don't have to settle. In
Against Convenience, Bullard sets a roadmap for how we can fight back against the juggernaut of empty ease to live a more meaningful, deeper, and gratifying life.
Contributor Bio:Bullard, Gabe
Gabe Bullard is a Nieman Journalism Fellow and a journalist with twenty years of experience. He has been a reporter for public radio in Kentucky and served as second-in-command in the digital news department at
National Geographic. He helped launch NPR's newest talk show,
1A, then became Managing Producer of NPR's
Here & Now. Gabe received his Masters in Literature, Culture, and Technology from American University, and his capstone project won the school's Kessler-Roberts Award for literary analysis. His work has appeared in
The Washington Post,
99% Invisible, and
Smithsonian Magazine. He writes a column on technology for the media-focused magazine
Nieman Reports, based at Harvard University. He recently co-founded
Together, Alone, an online magazine of television criticism.
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