Australians are gripped by feelings of doom about the state of the world. It’s time to throw the phone away | Peter Lewis

Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning is Here offers an alternate way of looking at things.

He argues history moves in cycles or saeculums that see the same patterns emerging every four generations.

Howe argues we are currently in the midst of our latest crisis phase, which began with 2007 GFC .

The ultimate act of resistance this summer is to slow down, put the phone away and commit to a long read.

The scroll and stream and the algorithmic playlist are all designed to steal our attention, not to earn it.

In Mark Zuckerberg's world of information overload maybe it is Gutenberg ’s older technology, a remarkable innovation that drove enlightenment and freedom through shared understanding, that is our best hope of emerging from this crisis.