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In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World Hardcover – May 10, 2022

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An Ars Technica Holiday Reading Title of 2021

A lively and approachable meditation on how we can transform our digital lives if we let a little Nietzsche in.

Who has not found themselves scrolling endlessly on screens and wondered: Am I living or distracting myself from living? In Emergency, Break Glass adapts Friedrich Nietzsche’s passionate quest for meaning into a world overwhelmed by “content.”

Written long before the advent of smartphones, Nietzsche’s aphoristic philosophy advocated a fierce mastery of attention, a strict information diet, and a powerful connection to the natural world. Drawing on Nietzsche’s work, technology journalist Nate Anderson advocates for a life of goal-oriented, creative exertion as more meaningful than the “frictionless” leisure often promised by our devices. He rejects the simplicity of contemporary prescriptions like reducing screen time in favor of looking deeply at what truly matters to us, then finding ways to make our technological tools serve this vision. With a light touch suffused by humor, Anderson uncovers the impact of this “yes-saying” philosophy on his own life―and perhaps on yours. 

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  1. Print length
    208 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    May 10, 2022
  5. Dimensions
    5.7 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1324004797
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1324004790
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Has your Carpe diem! been replaced by "How many emails canI answer before noon?"
Reclaim your attention from distraction.
Embrace Nietzsche's "yes-saying" philosophy.
"This is a must-read for anyone overwhelmed by the Information Age."--Publisher's Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nietzsche’s warning to avoid the seductions of easy comforts remains fresh… [In Emergency, Break Glass is] accessible and lively."
― Boston Globe

"Anderson gives us the philosopher we need for the moment at hand, and it is a welcome gift."
― Kirkus Reviews

"Unconventional arguments (read less, forget more) and Anderson’s facility in distilling the useful from Nietzsche’s writings while tossing the “bad, cruel or juvenile” breathe some refreshing originality into the screen obsession discourse. This is a must-read for anyone overwhelmed by the Information Age."
― Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Nate Anderson is the deputy editor at Condé Nast’s Ars Technica. He is the author of The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed, and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (May 10, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324004797
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324004790
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.7 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Nate Anderson

Nate Anderson

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Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica, where he writes about technology law and policy. His work has also been published in outlets like The Economist and Foreign Policy. His first computer was an Atari 600XL with a tape drive and so little memory that it could be filled just by typing in programs from magazines.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
64 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dolphin on Steroids
5.0 out of 5 stars Do more
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2023
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The book is an ode to do more and to take agency of your life; a Nietzsche rightfully reintroduced.
While my takeaways differ from Nate's, it showed me a side of Nietzsche that I had not considered before, in a form not bereft of hyperbole, most fitting to Nietzsche himself.

In short - have a go at the book, make sure it takes you two years to read because you are reading it only when out by yourself in a loud pub, and who knows, you just might want to join Nate's invitation in the end.
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Ryan Boissonneault
4.0 out of 5 stars Relevant advice from a questionable philosopher
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2022
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There are plenty of reasons to dislike Nietzsche. Even prior to his slow descent into madness, he mostly adopted anti-enlightenment principles and illiberal attitudes towards human equality. While Nietzsche was not a proto-Nazi himself (he hated bigots), his constant references to “higher types”—combined with his rejection of the idea that selflessness and compassion should be staples of morality—were easily incorporated into Nazi ideology (Hitler attended Nietzsche’s sister’s funeral).

So you would be forgiven for being inclined to pass on any book offering life advice from a man Hitler might have admired.

But you may want to reconsider. While many of Nietzsche’s ideas are objectionable, there is no doubt that he possessed the mind of a genius, and surely there is something we can learn from him. As the philosopher Julian Baggini said in response to criticisms of David Hume’s racist writings, “We should never completely dismiss even those who are almost always wrong, as they are almost always sometimes right too.” Nietzche’s genius may have been largely wasted on a contemptible psychology, but he nevertheless did produce some enduring ideas we can all benefit from today.

So the first lesson of the book may be this: Every prominent thinker has something to teach us, even if we mostly disagree with them. In fact, learning to critically interact with an author without slavishly following everything they say is a skill worth developing, as well as a sign of intellectual maturity. As Nate Anderson wrote:

“But if you don’t take Nietzsche as your guide and guru, if you instead embrace him as a dialogue partner and provocateur, these limitations need not be a roadblock to thinking with him. Nietzsche would have valued the attempt to wrestle with his ideas—even to reject some of them.”

So, what can Nietzsche teach us today? The overarching theme of his philosophy—even though he’s usually over-dramatic about it—is that a life of ease, comfort, pleasure, and safety is a rather poor and facile excuse for a life. While there is nothing inherently wrong with ease and comfort, in the absence of more ambitious goals, they can never truly create joy—which comes from creative struggle in pursuit of higher aspirations. This creative struggle often involves pain and discomfort, but this should be embraced, not avoided.

This more positive aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the focus of the book, and Anderson does a commendable job of applying the lessons to our tech-saturated world. He shows us how modern technology creates the kind of soul-crushing ease Nietzsche warned us about; with 24/7 access to the internet, the new digital paradigm encourages constant cheap entertainment, disconnection from our bodies and from the physical world, mental stimulation over physical activity, total digital control, and access to unlimited information.

Unlimited information poses its own special problems. Even ancient authors like Seneca complained that there were too many books to read, and proposed a more considered method of selection to ensure that one spent their limited time on the best books and authors possible. The problem, of course, is orders of magnitude greater today; we have near instant access to the entire canon of human literary and artistic output in addition to a constant stream of news and videos. Yet notice that most of us do not become scholars—we pass up the collective works of Shakespeare to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and we avoid more difficult, timeless material and opt instead for easier, more popular works.

Information overload creates two additional problems: 1) It makes us feel that we need to keep up with and learn everything, preventing us from going deep in any one subject or topic, and 2) it drowns out our own voice and creative potential as we grow accustomed to simply repeating and reacting to the views of others.

Nietzche’s solution to this is to give up the life of ease and overstimulation; to be selective in what one chooses to read and learn; to forget the things that don’t create a positive impact in one’s life; and to establish positive, creative goals that require struggle and discomfort in pursuit of excellence.

This advice is no doubt relevant to our modern technology habits, but the reader may wonder if this orientation to life, in general, is universally applicable. One could instead adopt a more Epicurean stance and insist that a life of simple pleasures and quality time spent with family and friends is superior to the life of creative struggle. Nietzsche’s difficult, mostly solitary life may have excluded this possibility for him, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to follow suit. As Anderson wrote:

“Perhaps because his life-long illness deprived him of so many common pleasures—sleep, sex, food, the simple feeling of robust good health—Nietzsche could not content himself with hedonism.”

This brings up another critical point: a philosopher’s ideas often stem from their psychological dispositions, and what they consider to be the good life is simply the good life for them. Whether you follow Nietzsche’s path of creative struggle or Epicurus’s path of moderate pleasure might largely depend on your personality and life circumstances. (For a concise presentation of the Epicurean side of the argument, check out How to Be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson.)

Notice also that you can embrace the life of creative struggle without adopting the hierarchical and illiberal philosophy of Nietzsche. Pursuing worthwhile goals does not necessitate harming or looking down on others, and it does not need to be, as Nietzsche suggests, such a solitary affair.

Nietzsche offers other more questionable advice, such as when he writes that he only ever reads the same eight authors (first of all, as Anderson points out, this isn’t even true of Nietzsche). And it’s generally bad advice anyway. Of course we should be selective in the material we read, but there’s also the danger of being over-selective. How can you know who the “best eight authors” even are if you don’t read more widely to discover them?

There’s been a tendency to overvalue specialization lately, but in my mind the value of indiscriminate, wider reading enhances your creativity by exposing you to various viewpoints and topics. And if Nietzsche is worried about having your own voice drowned out by reading, it seems to me that this will be more likely if you only read a limited number of authors, whom you might feel compelled to emulate rather than developing your own authentic voice.

Overall, the message of the book is a useful one, if not taken too far. You should be selective in what you read and consume, you should prioritize the real world over the digital world, and you’ll probably achieve more satisfaction in life if you set goals that are more ambitious than just being comfortable and safe. But taking things too far is precisely the danger with reading Nietzsche, as his distinguishing trademark among philosophers is his tendency to exaggerate almost everything. To Anderson’s credit, he recognizes and points this out, while retaining the core message that we should use technology as a means to achieving grander goals, not as an end in itself.
21 people found this helpful
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chris gredenius
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful challenge
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2022
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Enjoy the challenge to say yes to risk and adventure over safety and death. This is a well timed book. The pandemic has lead many of us, me, to screen overload. I needed to read this!
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J.W. Bertolotti
5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining Read
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2022
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Prior to reading, I was not extremely familiar with Nietzsche's writing. The author does a phenomenal job distilling Nietzsche's ideas into practical wisdom for modern life. I highly recommend it!
3 people found this helpful
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Think Fast
2.0 out of 5 stars Overwritten and Dense
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2022
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Every sentence of this book has been dragged through a thesaurus, stamped with great poetic effort, and over-plotted across snippets of Nietzsche to the point where much of this is straight-up garble. There's a good chance that Anderson's writing style simply repulsed me, but I think the book as a whole is, objectively, is an overwritten blog post.
4 people found this helpful
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Dave Terpstra
5.0 out of 5 stars This book delivers on its promise!
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2022
The cover of the books tells us Nietzsche can teach us something about joyful living in a tech-saturated world. Delivering on this claim, Anderson handles Nietzsche's writing in an accessible and insightful way. The author unpacks challenging passages and ideas from Nietzsche's sometimes complicated and confused writing and displays the essence of those thoughts for me, Joe Reader.

For armchair philosophers and those pondering how to live today, this book offers some helpful insights and unique perspectives.
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Bronx Book Nerd
5.0 out of 5 stars A call for saner living
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2022
The author applies Nietzsche's philosophy as a salve to address the downside of our current technology driven world, particularly that of social media's impact on the quality of our lives. Nietzsche was an opponent of the easy life, which is practically the opposite of what humanity aspires to today. We want everything cheap and quick and to require the least effort possible so that we can move on to our next frenzy driven activity. This has been a recipe for societal malaise. We need instead to engage with the world physically as much as possible but most importantly in human face-to-face connections. The book not only presents Nietzsche's philosophy juxtaposed against the argument against modern life, but also exposes the reader to other aspects of his philosophy. I have already reduced the control of social media by turning off notifications for everything excepts texts. It's a relief t not be constantly interrupted by pings of various tones. Nietzsche is sometimes a tough and controversial read, but always rewarding. It is great to have an author like Anderson distill the philosopher's work into digestible chunks for this specific need.
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Top reviews from other countries

Russel
5.0 out of 5 stars Nietzsche on Information Overload
Reviewed in Germany on May 16, 2023
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I really liked the authors style and humor. A lot of good nietzsche quotes on information overload.

The second part with tipps and remedies is of course more the authors view than nietzsches.
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