Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age
"Perhaps no previous scholar has synthesized the ways media technologies are harming a sense of community, especially in such a compact book. ... Perhaps [Bugeja] ought to give himself credit for implanting optimism in at least some of his readers, because his book, if read carefully, is empowering."  --The Des Moines Register"Wise, troubling, tough-minded and profoundly on target,Interpersonal Divideis a thoughtfully human response to the burgeoning challenge to our sense and practice of community posed by the new communications technologies, their use as well as misuse."  -- Hodding Carter III, President and CEO,John S. and James L. Knight Foundation"Michael Bugeja has delivered a creative, new approach to media and technology in this thoughtful and humanistic treatment.  The emphasis here is on meaning and human communication, not a tired polemic on the inevitability of technological change. . . . Refreshing!" -- Everette Dennis, Distinguished Felix E. Larkin Professor,Fordham University"Michael Bugeja'sInterpersonal Divideis a book of concerned prescription. An accomplished poet, an ethicist and a journalism professor, Bugeja aims to assess "changes resulting from the Technology Revolution of the 1990s." He's careful to note at the start of this admirably clear volume that he has not written a book of "social panic." But he has written one of social high anxiety. ... At the end of each chapter, he lists journal exercises and discussion ideas for those who feel inspired to examine their media habits. You could do a lot worse with your spare time (and probably will). Bugeja largely lives up to the second goal he set for himself -- to produce a multidisciplinary work "to explain complex truths in plain language rather than to validate those truths via complex language" --The Washington Post