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IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives
Maybe someday
48
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
9/100Critics
88/100Scholars
Author:
Chris Stedman
Publisher:
Broadleaf Books
Date:
October 20, 2020
IRL, Chris Stedman's exploration of authenticity in the digital age, shines a light on how age-old notions of realness--who we are and where we fit in the world--can be freshly understood in our increasingly online lives. Stedman offers a different way of seeing the supposed split between our online and offline selves: the internet and social media are new tools for understanding and expressing ourselves, and the not-always-graceful ways we use these tools can reveal new insights into far older human behaviors and desires.
What The Reviewers Say
In IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives, Chris Stedman seeks to answer 'what it means to be digital and to reframe our frustrating, fascinating, and fraught digital lives as a new opportunity to ask persistently difficult questions about what it means to be human.'.
... there’s never been a better time for a book like IRL. It’s a book that deals with elemental urges in plain, direct language.
While IRL is jam-packed with metaphors and beautifully described vignettes of Stedman’s life, the most interesting and perhaps central narrative of the book is the author’s experience with scabies.
With the pandemic having moved so many of our 'real life' activities online, here’s a relevant investigation into what it means to be 'real' in virtual space.
