About the Author
Dr. Mari Swingle is a practicing therapist, researcher, lecturer, and author who has been working in the fields of mental health and education for over 25 years. She is a renowned expert on the effects of i-technology, and holds a PhD and MA in Clinical Psychology and an MA in Language Education. mostrar mais She lives in Vancouver, Canada, www.drmariswingle.com mostrar menos
Obras de Mari Swingle
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Conhecimento Comum
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Membros
Resenhas
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 1
- Membros
- 28
- Popularidade
- #471,397
- Avaliação
- 4.3
- Resenhas
- 1
- ISBNs
- 4
The audiobook version of i-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media are Changing our Brains, our Behavior, and the Evolution of our Species is a nine-hour academic presentation from the rostrum. I was excited to hear this book because I valued the content, but the dense academic tone, the passive voice, the rare insertion of accessible and tangible case studies makes for a dry listen. Many of the already listed Amazon reviews have that this book should be for parents to help their children. However, the book would need to be completely revised to do what few books can, pass on scientific information from a Ph.D. to the masses. The author would do well to listen to the advice of William Zinsser of On Writing Well fame and cut the size of the book in half, to change larger words like metamorphose to “change” or humorous to “funny.” A better way to see where our technology is leading us and to see the possibilities of technology and education would be to listen to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. In a game shell, we can see solutions to classroom conduct, overcrowding, and other educational issues.
The iMinds book has merit, the lessons are buried, however. The author speaks to our modern day struggles to manage the technologies that both help us and hurt us. Danielle Ofri, a physician and clinician, did a really good job of starting off with a compelling narrative in her book What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear that encapsulated her thesis about the distance between provider and patient. iMinds author and Ph.D. Mari Swingle waits until deep in the first chapters before bringing up a tangible compare and contrast example with forgettable fictional case study names.
The information, however, is important and valuable with step wise instruction on starting a discussion about the media and its role in common psychiatric diagnoses. She maintains a balance between speaking to the effects on new and old generations and uses data to back her claims. However, while the impact of the technology can affect a gamut of age groups, I can only expect that listeners with professorial level vocabulary and background knowledge would have the wherewithal to endure the entire book. The reviews that tout this book as a layman’s guide are completely false. It both feels and sounds like a professor reading a PowerPoint with too many lines per slide.
About the narrator
Lisa Bunting is a veteran narrator who captures the gravitas of the core content. While the reading is spectacular, she can’t overcome the passive voice, the dense academic tone, and the general inflation of the lessons in this book to keep one’s interest. In short, Lisa’s underutilized in that she has tremendous range from her reading of Food Junkies to The Road to You, but in this book, she’s forced to talk about the characters rather than portray them. On rewrite, it would have been wonderful to hear Lisa work with clinical vignettes and bring them alive. However, this book is a Whispersync, an exact match of the electronic version and that’s not possible.
Audiobook was provided for review by the publisher.… (mais)