A01=Dan Turello
Author_Dan Turello
Category=DS
Category=PDR
Category=QD
Category=QDTS
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
literary criticism
philosophy
social science
Product details
- ISBN 9780231220163
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 17 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"Thrilling and fun. From Aristotle and Dante to Bono and adrienne maree brown, Dan Turello takes us to a wonderland where technology meets ideas."
—Azar Nafisi, New York Times best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Technology gets a bad rap. It is accused of being a dehumanizing force, a chief culprit in everything from mass commercialization to environmental crisis through the potential collapse of civilization. In Connection, Dan Turello reflects on the origins and limitations of such views. He offers a philosophical and literary meditation on what technology is and can be, arguing that it provides surprising ways to strengthen and deepen what makes us human.
Putting medieval Italian poets and Renaissance artists in conversation with contemporary philosophers and pop culture, this book traces the roots of our fascination with—and aversion to—technology. Turello shows how the moments that shaped Western views of technology offer perspective on our current predicaments, as figures such as St. Francis of Assisi and Dante grappled with problems that are strikingly reminiscent of the ones we face today. Challenging nostalgia for preindustrial innocence, he demonstrates that historically technology has enabled us to develop art, philosophy, religion, and culture. Today, technology can safeguard human creativity—if we choose self-awareness and community over consumption and exploitation. Wide-ranging and inviting, Connection makes a timely case for embodied experience in the age of AI.
—Azar Nafisi, New York Times best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Technology gets a bad rap. It is accused of being a dehumanizing force, a chief culprit in everything from mass commercialization to environmental crisis through the potential collapse of civilization. In Connection, Dan Turello reflects on the origins and limitations of such views. He offers a philosophical and literary meditation on what technology is and can be, arguing that it provides surprising ways to strengthen and deepen what makes us human.
Putting medieval Italian poets and Renaissance artists in conversation with contemporary philosophers and pop culture, this book traces the roots of our fascination with—and aversion to—technology. Turello shows how the moments that shaped Western views of technology offer perspective on our current predicaments, as figures such as St. Francis of Assisi and Dante grappled with problems that are strikingly reminiscent of the ones we face today. Challenging nostalgia for preindustrial innocence, he demonstrates that historically technology has enabled us to develop art, philosophy, religion, and culture. Today, technology can safeguard human creativity—if we choose self-awareness and community over consumption and exploitation. Wide-ranging and inviting, Connection makes a timely case for embodied experience in the age of AI.
Dan Turello is a writer, cultural historian, and photographer. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Psyche, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others, as well as in scholarly journals. He is a Technology and Humanity Fellow at the Center for the Future of AI, Mind & Society at Florida Atlantic University.
