Your Happiness was Hacked: Why Tech is Winning the Battle to Control your Brain, and How to Fight Back

Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We've become a tribe of tech addicts--and it's not entirely our fault.

Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation.

But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.

About the Authors

Vivek Wadhwa is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program and a distinguished fellow and professor at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering. He is a globally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and the author of three other books, including Driver in the Driverless Car, Innovating Women, and The Immigrant Exodus.

Alex Salkever is a writer and consultant who has been covering technology for major publications for more than 20 years. He was a technology editor of BusinessWeek.com and a regular science contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, and was a contributor to The Immigrant Exodus. He was recently is vice president of marketing communications at Mozilla.