Manifesto of the "contemplative computing": how to build a safer and more useful / effective relationship with technology. The goal is conquering a new, zen-like relationship of entanglement with our electronic devices. Definitely a book which represents our present days, some good concepts and a lot of common sense. ( )

Tells the reader to add mindfulness and other Zen practices to simplify life. Generally targeted toward people that are completely attached to their smartphones, I felt a bit left out seeing how I do not possess a smartphone and am not in a job requiring me to be online 24/7. However, the other parts of the book did happen to be helpful, and I would recommend it for technophiles quite highly. ( )

Don't use the phone at the dinner table. Ever.

My husband and I have a long-standing custom of reading aloud on Wednesday nights. It's a bit of a trick to find something that will appeal to both of us for the length of a book, which may last us several months at the rate of about thirty pages per session. Most of the time we forge on and complete a book, even when we have mixed feelings; but we'd already ditched two books this month, one after 66 pages and the other after only five.

When our grown son recommended this title, we were willing to give it a try. As a member of the wired generation, he found The Distraction Addiction very relevant to his life and habits. My husband and I, however, don't find ourselves checking e-mail before getting out of bed, battling constant interruptions by RSS feeds and Twitter posts, or struggling with productivity-shattering distractions in the workplace. Yes, we spend a lot of time in front of our computers, but it's at a leisurely pace, one of the blessings of retirement after long working lives.

By the time we'd completed the introduction, we recognized that we are simply not the audience to whom this book is addressed.

Moreover, it sounded to me as if the author were to a considerable extent capitalizing on a (presumed) knowledge of Zen principles and practice, repackaging and selling them as an antidote to the mental fragmentation that can be caused by the ceaseless, raucous electronic demands for attention that come with living online. As a sometime follower of Zen, I have a certain distaste for the commercialization of Buddhism, inevitable though it may be (and irrespective of its potential benefits).

The onslaught of stimuli in the Internet age and its impact on our ability to focus and process content is, by the way, the same terrain traversed by Nicholas Carr in his The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, another work that we failed to admire.

So we've set Pang's work aside and moved on, not so much as a result of some perceived fault in the material as because of a mismatch between reader and content.

(Abandoned on page 16; not rated.)

“The Distraction Addition” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is a book for our times. Mr. Pang recognizes how we are all becoming slaves to technology, with checking our email every few seconds, to “switch-tasking” which most people think is multi-tasking,” to forgetting how to just be with ourselves and with others.

Throughout the book, Mr. Pang brings things to the reader’s attention that seem obvious but really isn’t until he points it out. One of these is watching how you breathe before, during and after checking your email. I did and was surprised that I held my breath a little when I was pulling my email up! Mr. Pang refers to this as email-apnea and compares it to sleep apnea and it cannot be good for you.

I really like that Mr. Pang has antidotes about himself and his family sprinkled throughout the book to illustrate what the problem is and how he has tried dealing with it. He discusses studies that have been done to help support his various arguments. He has conversations with various people throughout the world (including monks!).

This book isn’t really ground-breaking, but it is full of commonsense about how to handle taking care of ourselves and not letting technology take over our lives so much that we do not take care of our mental, physical and psychological health. I say it is commonsense, but oftentimes commonsense is elusive until someone points it out. Mr. Pang offers ideas on how to reduce our stresses that are brought on by being plugged-in all the time. ( )