Masuma Ahuja book urges greater connection, community and infrastructure for belonging
Masuma Ahuja book The Infrastructure of Belonging offers a vision for how we can build more connected societies.
Masuma Ahuja's book The Infrastructure of Belonging: How We Unlock Economic Possibility has published in all key formats.
The concise work argues that being lonely is costing us societally and that to address it we must better equip the underlying organising systems that support our connection and community.
Though technology enables society to connect and engage virtually, our social contact is declining and our worlds are becoming smaller.
“In many ways technology delivered on the promise that you can connect with someone anywhere in the world,” Ahuja recently told CNN. “But we feel a little worse every time we put our phones down ... because so much of the technology that we are spending our time on is not built or optimising for connection. It’s optimising for our attention. It’s optimising for us to stay in there.”
“If it makes us upset if it makes us angry ... we don’t feel connected when that happens, we feel worse about the world. We don’t feel like people are great. We don’t feel like we understand the people around us. It makes us feel lonelier,” Ahuja added.
The book has been described as “punching above its weight” and “well worth a read.”
Ahuja is a journalist, author and strategist who has spent her career exploring how we build belonging and what becomes possible when we do. She shares in a Pulitzer Prize, a Murrow Award, and a Webby for her work as a journalist. Her first book, Girlhood, published by Little, Brown in 2021 featured the stories of 30 young women from around the globe. Ahuja writes and hosts Future Possible, a series exploring how we design and fund the infrastructure for a resilient future.