Andrew's new book moves beyond polemic to present today's social media revolution as the most wrenching cultural transformation since the mid 19th century industrial revolution. Fusing a fast-paced historical narrative with memorable eyewitness stories from the front-lines of today's online social networking revolution, Digital Vertigo argues that, contrary to most conventional wisdom, the social media transformation is weakening, disorienting and dividing us rather than establishing what technology utopians falsely herald as the dawn of a new egalitarian and communal age.

The tragic paradox of life in the social media age, Digital Vertigo explains, is the incompatibility between our longing on the internet for meaningful community and friendship with our equally powerful longing for online individual freedom. The problem with the digital revolution, Digital Vertigo explains, is that neither of these desires is being properly satisfied. Exposing the hollowness of most social networks and virtual worlds, Digital Vertigo shows that the more electronically connected we become, the more traditional community and friendship is undermined, making us in the long term lonelier than ever. Rather than empowering us, therefore, the false promises of the digital revolution are making us resentful, unhappy and anxious.

Just as best-selling books by Neil Postman, Alvin Toffler, Christopher Lasch and Daniel Bell revealed the vertiginous problems of late 20th century social and cultural life, so Digital Vertigo exposes the troublingly confusing consequences of the 21st century digital revolution. Revealing the problems with life under the transparent glare of an always-on networked culture, Digital Vertigo offers an impassioned defense of an individual's right to privacy, quiet reflection and traditional friendship in the digital age. Inspired by J.S. Mill's On Liberty, this is a reflective manifesto of resistance for those of us distracted by the constant demands of social media and concerned about its long range impact on our psyche, culture, and relationships.

Rather than a Luddite escape into a halcyon pre-digital past, Digital Vertigo offers a tight historical and contemporary narrative that makes today's social media revolution the defining event of the early 21st century. By seamlessly tracing the history of both technology and society from the industrial revolution to today, Digital Vertigo shows that the digital age and our age of anxiety are deeply interconnected. It isn't just the social media revolution that fosters loneliness and anxiety, Digital Vertigo reveals; its rise is actually a response to the communal breakdown and individual isolation that has been germinating over the past half century.

As a richly networked Silicon Valley insider with personal access to the biggest individual brands in social media, a frequent speaker on the global technology circuit, a former college professor of modern history and an internationally syndicated new media columnist, Andrew Keen is an ideal guide to our brave new online world. He takes readers on a unique journey from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the great exhibitionism of popular online communities like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. He moves seamlessly from London's 19th century Crystal Palace to 21st century San Francisco, from Oxford University's historic debating chamber to Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, from Alfred Hitchcock's movie Vertigo to Jan Vermeer's painting "Woman In Blue Reading a Letter" in his quest to uncover the real human costs of the contemporary digital revolution. He travels through virtual communities too, meeting both the winners and losers in a bizarrely digital-Darwinian struggle to gain attention and recognition on today's information rich but attention scarce social media landscape.