We live in an age of constant distraction. Is there a price to pay for this?

In this superb essay, renowned critic Sebastian Smee explores the fate of the inner life in the age of the internet. Throughout history, artists and thinkers have cultivated the deep self, and seen value in solitude and reflection. But today, with social media, wall-to-wall marketing and the agitation of modern life, everything feels illuminated, transparent. We feel bereft without our phones and their cameras and the feeling of instant connectivity. It gets hard to pick up a book, harder still to stay with it.

Without nostalgia or pessimism, Sebastian Smee guides us from the apparent fullness of the app-filled world to a more complex sense of self. Considering everything from Facebook to Chekhov, he evokes what is valuable and under threat. If we lose the inner life, Smee asks, what do we lose of ourselves? 
 
“Every day I spend hours and hours on my phone . . . We are all doing it, aren’t we? It has come to feel completely normal. Even when I put my device aside and attach it to a charger, it pulses away in my mind, like the throat of a toad, full of blind, amphibian appetite.” Sebastian Smee, Net Loss

What do Australians want most from their next government? In this vivid, grounded, surprising essay, Rebecca Huntley listens to the people and hears a call for change. 
Too often we focus on the angry, reactionary minority. But, Huntley shows, there is also a large progressive centre. For some time, a clear majority have been saying they want action – on climate and energy, on housing and inequality, on corporate donations and the corruption of democracy.

Would a Shorten Labor government rise to this challenge? What can be learnt from the failures of past governments? Was marriage equality just the beginning? In Australia Fair, Rebecca Huntley reveals the state of the nation and makes the case for democratic renewal – should the next government heed the call.

“Often the claim is made that our politics and politicians are poll-driven. This is, on the whole, bunkum. If polls were influential, we would have invested much more in renewable energy, maintained and even increased funding to the ABC, and made child care cheaper. We may already have made changes to negative gearing and moved towards adopting elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We would have taken up the first iteration of the Gonski education reforms. These are some of the issues where a democratic majority comes together, a basic agreement crossing party lines.” Rebecca Huntley, Australia Fair