Digital marketing executive Edwards has some valid. . . .points to make about the wide-ranging effects of digital communications technology. According to Edwards, the ever-growing role of the online world has crippled brick and mortar retail, endangered the future of cities, weakened human connections, exterminated privacy, and made perpetual underemployment almost inevitable—and that’s just a partial list. Edwards does acknowledge the hyperbole of the title and the book’s general thrust; the penultimate chapter. . . .enumerate[s] how the interconnected world has changed lives for the better. He notes how hard some things were before the digital revolution, and believes that it’s 'possible that digital is the equivalent of agriculture in the evolution of the species.' Despite this effort at balance, readers will come away with a growing sense of unease at how insidiously digital advances have invaded our lives and modes of thinking.

Publishers Weekly

Futurist and digital-marketing consultant Edwards uses 'digital' to describe IT without ranting, but rather exploring. Stating, 'Digital entrepreneurs . . . with the Darwinistic ethos of Silicon Valley . . . seem to believe their achievements approach a condition of natural law driven by their . . . gold rather than the digital utopia they . . . suggest they’re creating.' He sees piracy as seriously compromising cultural arts, yet also perceives a micro-fan-based business model that is more successful than stadium concerts. While mourning newsprint shrinkage, he claims, 'digital took away the ad dollars—newspapers took away the news' by cutting resources, yet acknowledges that one cannot readily share articles from newsprint while digital news thrives in the virtual space of global social-media interaction. Perhaps most tellingly, Edwards analyzes Amazon’s customer relationship value with its 'first mover' business model: investor-subsidized low prices increase the number of buyers and destroy competitors, thus allowing the first mover, as the remaining source, to raise prices 'almost at will.' Hence, digital-market hegemony via global reach is the long game, which is harmful to consumers. A thought-provoking and controversial analysis.

Booklist

With Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and the proliferation of cell phone apps, the digital age has created a revolution in lifestyles, education, finance, retail, and politics. In this book, Edwards, a digital marketing executive, investigates both the good and the bad of this new digital world. The good is easy to understand: lower costs of goods and increased communication. The bad involves reshaping the economy in potentially undesirable ways. Edwards includes chapters on digital threats to record companies, newspapers, photographic studios, and artists. Through his tour of the digital world, the author argues that Amazon transforms retail, MOOCS (massive open online courses) challenge universities, blogs alter politics, and telecommuting alters urban life. Privacy is often compromised when millennials are more willing to share their private information with others and governments request personal information to enhance security. According to the author, one key to reducing digital challenges is to have more face-to-face meetings. The book contains many references to current events published in popular newspapers and magazines. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners.

Choice Reviews

Human interaction seems to be deader than dead. How many dinner times are silent because everyone in the family considers the happenings on their tiny screen to be more important than the person sitting across from them? Is personal privacy an obsolete concept? Political discourse has become balkanized, in that believers in nearly anything can put up their own website (or websites) and tell themselves that they are right, and everyone else is wrong. What can a person do about it? Reduce Your Digital Exposure. Leave your smartphone off until you actually need it. This is an excellent and eye-opening book. It should be read by everyone, especially by those who have to check Facebook (for instance) every few minutes.

Midwest Book Review

This book is a crash course in the emerging problems of digital technologies. Education, politics, retail, financial services – all suffer as a result of ‘digital,’ but there is hope – some jobs will never get digitized. The hope is in consuming less of digital and adapting digital to us, rather than adapting to it.

Pavica Sheldon, PhD, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Living within earshot of the locomotive’s whistle, Thoreau reminded us that wildness is the tonic for civilization. Both Walden and Edwards' Digital deserve to be read outdoors, in nature, and then discussed with friends.

James Rodger Fleming, Colby College