Chapter 1: Now is the Age of Isolation
Pretty in Pink | A New Definition of Loneliness | How Did We Get Here? | The Cruel Changes Brought About by 'Freedom'

Chapter 2: Illness Leading to Death, Loneliness
Lonely Bodies | The Haredi Health Mystery | The Health Benefits of Community | The Evolutionary Trait of Loneliness | Alone, Alone, All Alone, All Alone | Helper's High

Chapter 3: Why They Supported Hitler and Trump
The Lonely Mind Always Sees the Serpent | Lonely Nazis and Totalitarianism | The New Age of Populism | The Politics of Distrust | Why They Support Trump | The Loss of Social Status and Self-Esteem | The Community's Pawnbroker | The Weaponization of Immigration

Chapter 4: No One Talks
No one smiles here | Rudeer, blunter, colder | Antisocial pace | Why you should chat with the barista | Rootless neighborhood | Living alone | Eating alone | Honing democratic skills

Chapter 5: How Cities Exclude Them
Hostile Architecture in the City | Covert Exclusion | The Principle of Inclusion

Chapter 6: People Locked in Their Smartphones
The ultimate kaleidoscope craze | Always together, but always alone | Look at that dog | The split self | Learn how to read facial expressions | Life without screens | Digital slot machines | More cruelty | Real-time bullying | Public rejection and shame | I like my avatar | Change is possible

Chapter 7: Labor in the 7th Century is Lonely
Open-plan offices | Digitally-driven workplaces | Incentives for kindness | Work-all-and-no-play | Always online | Caregiving leave

Chapter 8: Surveillance Capitalism and the Rigged Economy
They say it's not a computer | Every breath you take | Avoiding the radar | The age of surveillance capitalism | I give it 4 stars | A rigged economy | The robots are coming | No one is safe

Chapter 9: Only Alexa and Sex Robots Make Us Smile
Selling Hugs | She Makes Me Smile | Inanimate Love | Fellow Soldiers | Social Robots Are Coming | A Friend for All of Us | Let's Talk About Sex | Is Alexa's New Skill 'Unfriendly?' | Just Leave Me Alone with the Robots | The Challenge of Being More Human

Chapter 10: The Loneliness Economy: Connect and Reach Out
All the Lonely People | The Last Piece | The Commercialized Community | Is the 'Sharing Economy' Another Scam? | It's Me, Not Us | Community Can't Be Purchased; It Takes Practice | Exclusive Communities

Chapter 11: Bringing the Scattered World Together
Reclaiming Capitalism with Care and Compassion | Changing the Calculation | We See and Hear | Practicing Democracy | Designing Diverse Communities | The Future Is in Our Hands

1.
Are we ready to build immunity to loneliness after COVID-19?
World-renowned political economist Norina Hertz poses the most urgent question facing humanity in the post-COVID era.

As of November 2021, 76% of South Korea's population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, accelerating social reconstruction in the post-COVID era.
The problem is that two years of social distancing and isolation for survival are once again threatening our very survival.
As we navigate the global crisis, economist Norina Hertz warns that we are not immune to a social disease more serious than the pandemic: loneliness.
Just as the medical workers who were quarantined during the SARS outbreak in Beijing in 2003 still suffered the mental and physical aftereffects of the quarantine three years later, the entire human race will pay a heavy price for isolation due to COVID-19.


Even before COVID-19 triggered a "social recession"—a decline in overall happiness due to a lack of social interaction—six out of ten Koreans already considered themselves lonely.
Loneliness doesn't just come when you're alone.
In "The Age of Isolation," Norina Hutz argues that loneliness is more powerful the more you are in urban crowds, the younger you are, and the more connected you are online.
The isolation and loneliness discussed here are not simply the emotional states felt when alone, but encompass concepts such as a sense of disconnection from politics, alienation from work and the workplace, and exclusion due to economic status, all of which are experienced by modern people living in the 21st century.


The author points out that modern people in the 21st century, trapped by smartphones, the city's non-face-to-face systems, and surveillance labor, are in a state of chronic 'isolation.'
Forced isolation causes us to lose the instinct for communication that drives human evolution, driving society toward alienation, exclusion, polarization, and political extremism.
Drawing on extensive case studies and over a decade of exploration into the social costs of loneliness, this book delves into the roots of the "isolationist society" that is dismantling the way we work, vote, and communicate.


2.
Why Marginalized Workers Became Trump's Fierce Supporters
Forced isolation fuels the breakdown of social solidarity and political extremism.

It has been less than a decade since loneliness became a subject of psychiatric study, and we still treat loneliness as a personal problem limited to “a feeling of loneliness or sadness due to being alone.”
However, research on the lethal effects on individuals' minds and bodies refutes this conventional wisdom.
Loneliness is as damaging to your health as alcoholism, twice as damaging as obesity, and as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Additionally, prolonged isolation significantly increases the risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, and dementia by causing extreme stress and chronic inflammation, and increases the risk of premature death by up to 30%.
The resulting social costs are also significant.
In the United States, where three out of five people report feeling lonely, social isolation costs Medicare $7 billion annually.


The socioeconomic costs of loneliness are not limited to public health issues.
Just as a mouse that has been locked up alone for a long time regards its fellow mouse as an 'intruder' and attacks him cruelly, modern people in the 'lonely century' have lost their unique human instinct for communication and are attacking each other like 'lonely mice'.
Interestingly, actual human brain MRI experiments have shown that isolated subjects have decreased activity in the temporal lobe, an area that is activated when empathizing with the suffering of others, and increased activity in the visual cortex, an area of ​​the brain associated with alertness, attention, and vision.
Norina Hertz emphasizes that the alienation and powerlessness felt by those who are socially and economically isolated and marginalized, or the "loneliness of expanded justice," is a serious threat to the global situation in the 21st century.

According to this book, socially and economically marginalized people have lost even a minimal sense of connection to politics, flocking to extremist parties for decades, and becoming targets of populists (Chapter 3). Through in-depth interviews with coal miners in eastern Tennessee who experienced a decline in socioeconomic status after the 2008 financial crisis, the author analyzes the main reasons why these traditional Democratic supporters suddenly turned into ardent supporters of Donald Trump.
He found that the campaign slogan, “I will remember the American men and women who have gone unremembered!”, the 70 fanatical rallies held over three years, and the consistent use of “we” and “us” resonated deeply with marginalized groups seeking a sense of belonging and recognition.
Trump knew the power of "us" and maximized it as a strategy to rally his supporters.


As social trust in others and communities declines, people become more attracted to the exclusive and divisive forms of community offered by populists, and economic crises exacerbate this tendency.
The populist strategy of expanding support bases by utilizing the language of the community has proven effective in Italy's League party, Spain's Vox party, and Belgium's far-right Flemish Belgian party.
This is why Hannah Arendt's 1951 analysis of the characteristics of those who followed Nazism as "isolation and a lack of normal social relations, not barbarism and degeneration" still seems valid.

3.
"The unique nature of 21st-century loneliness: the more connected we are, the more isolated we become."
Children's communication skills are at risk when they're glued to their smartphones and social media.

This crisis of democracy is not unrelated to the reality that most daily communication is being replaced by non-face-to-face communication through smartphones and social media.
Communication through screens, that is, communication that excludes subtle physical cues such as body movements, touch, and smells, is prone to misunderstandings and weakens bonds between people.
As a prime example, the author focuses on Korea's "mukbang," a global phenomenon that has seen explosive growth over the past decade (Chapter 4). Subscribers to mukbang YouTubers simulate social experiences by "staring at their computer screens, using mukbang as a 'meal companion' to 'chat' and soothe the loneliness of mealtimes."
The reality that even the most basic form of communication, such as conversation over a meal, requires payment in the form of star balloons and likes shows the gloomy side of a lonely century.


Today's use of mobile phones and social media has made humans 'always connected' like never before in history.
We check our phones an average of 221 times a day, for an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes each day, or about 1,200 hours a year (Chapter 6). Ironically, the more we become connected, the more isolated we become. This is the unique nature of the 21st-century loneliness crisis.
Because the contactless connections made possible through social media and mobile phones have significantly diminished our unique ability to communicate.

In a conversation with the president of an Ivy League university, the author hears the shocking story of a supplementary course recently opened at the university called "How to Read Facial Expressions."
Facial expressions are the most basic nonverbal information we obtain in interactions with others, but most college freshmen show a significant decline in this ability, which is almost instinctive.
The link between poor communication skills and screen use was also confirmed by the PEACH project conducted at the University of Bristol in 2010.
Experiments have shown that children who spend more than two hours a day looking at screens like television or computers not only have difficulty expressing their emotions, but also exhibit hyperactivity and have trouble regulating strong negative emotions like anger.


The impact of social media is even more profound at a time when we are forming our own identity, voice, and moral capacity through social interaction.
“Not only do the shallow, show-off conversations that take place in front of crowds erode our conversational skills, but social media turns us into insecure merchants who relentlessly pursue online social recognition like ‘likes’ and ‘follows.’” This goes without saying, not to mention the increasingly serious problems caused by cyberbullying and malicious comments.
This is a chilling diagnosis, considering the reality of our children, who are engrossed in short-form online platforms like TikTok and YouTube amidst two years of school closures due to COVID-19.


4.
What Makes Gig Workers Obsessed with 'Star Ratings'?
The Deepening Face of Surveillance Capitalism Amid Automation and Advanced Contactless Technologies

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea's self-employed have suffered a severe economic blow due to business restrictions.
What made those who were in despair over the possibility of losing their livelihoods even more miserable was the 'star rating' left on the platform by a customer whose face they had never seen before.
As the use of delivery apps has tripled since the pandemic began, countless self-employed people have felt their livelihoods threatened by the swamp of star ratings.
According to this book, we live in what sociologist Shoshana Zuboff calls "the age of surveillance capitalism" (Chapter 8). This means an era in which employers monitor our every move, and AI, big data, and advanced devices are used to invade our privacy and determine crucial career paths like promotions and layoffs.


For example, Amazon has developed wristbands that monitor every movement of its logistics workers, from bathroom breaks to scratching an itch.
When their work speed slows down, their monitors and bands start to scream, “Please speed it up!”
In 2017, Three Square Market, a technology company in Wisconsin, implanted microchips in the hands of more than 50 of its employees.


In the age of surveillance capitalism, workers are forced to rate each other.
Employees at Bridgewater Associates rate each other in real time through an app called Dots.
In the gig economy, agreeing to be rated is often a condition of employment.
Gig workers are constantly monitored, their logs collected, digitally whipped, and pushed to the limits of lonely labor.
It is estimated that up to 60 million workers worldwide are part of the gig economy, and by 2027, one in three people will make a living through gig work via online platforms.
It is deeply concerning that so many gig workers' livelihoods are at the mercy of opaque evaluation systems that fail to account for individual diversity and are sometimes loaded with racial and gender biases.


The wave of automation in manufacturing over the past few decades has also been a major cause of worker alienation and isolation.
In the United States, more than 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation since 2000, with each robot replacing an average of 3.3 human workers.
In some Chinese factories, up to 40% of workers have been replaced by robots.
An interesting finding was that areas with higher levels of "automation exposure" had more residents who were more likely to vote for nationalist or far-right parties.
Even considering the benefits of automation—cheap, high-quality products and cost savings—the risks it poses to those who feel disenfranchised and marginalized by the social system are clear.


The author emphasizes that “attempts to maximize labor efficiency under the ideological foundation of neoliberalism inevitably lead to a vicious cycle that weakens the link between work and community and undermines the social safety net.”


5.
"The loneliness economy exploded due to COVID-19: Your isolation becomes a moneymaker."
Beyond the city as a source of exclusion, alienation, and isolation, imagining a new community.

The fast pace of the city and the loneliness in the crowds make us not just antisocial, but also antisocial.
Our cities inherently embody the principle of exclusion, whether it's the "inconvenient bench" (Camden Bench) that drives out the homeless, housing complexes with separate entrances for the underprivileged, or contactless facilities in various stores.
And COVID-19 has turned this slow but steady trend into a sharp and steep upward trend.
Frequent lockdowns and social distancing have solidified the contactless system, and overnight, in many areas, contactless has become our only option.


The author argues that the more we exclude humans from everyday communication and exchange, the more lonely we will inevitably become.
Even simple "micro-interactions," such as a formal chat with a store clerk or a quick brush with someone at the gym, can lead to higher levels of well-being and connection.
Conversely, as non-face-to-face interactions become more institutionalized, micro-interactions will decrease and feelings of isolation and disconnection will inevitably increase.


Although experiencing a sense of community is becoming increasingly difficult, the desire to belong remains.
And the 'Loneliness Economy' will explode as corporations exploit this gap and lead the way.
To satisfy our unquenchable desire for what Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence,” companies are employing ever-more innovative methods (Chapter 10). We order friendship through apps like we order cheeseburgers, we call iPhone stores “town squares,” we call aisles lined with merchandise “streets,” exhibition spaces “piazzas,” and tech information desks “forests,” all of which are lexically hijacked to mimic real civic spaces.

We have already experienced that the 'sharing economy' promoted by platform companies is nothing more than a fad, far removed from the true spirit of sharing.
The author questions whether a community commercialized by corporations can truly provide an experience of living together.


On an evolutionary level, our primal need for physical contact and coexistence is so strong.
To change the course of loneliness in the 21st century, to revitalize our citizens' sense of community, to bridge the divides that have formed among us, we need to understand the realities of this "lonely century."
How can we empower everyone to give and receive help and care? Could virtues like caring, kindness, and compassion become the new modus operandi of our time? This book will serve as a first step toward finding structural solutions and launching a collaborative effort.