In two slim yet intellectually ambitious works—The Age of Noise: Attention as the New Currency and The Mirror of Machines: Reflections on AI, Ethics, and the Future of Humanity—Dr Sumeet Bhasin turns his gaze on the twin pressures reshaping modern consciousness. One book interrogates how our attention is harvested, fragmented, and monetised; the other examines the unsettling emergence of artificial minds that increasingly mirror our own. Read together, they form a coherent and deeply considered meditation on what it means to remain human at a moment when technology claims both our time and our self-understanding.
In The Age of Noise, Dr Bhasin is not interested in cataloguing the usual suspects—smartphones, social media, endless notifications—as isolated villains. Instead, he situates distraction within a larger economy of attention, one that has learned to weaponise human psychology with extraordinary sophistication. What distinguishes this book from the glut of anti-distraction literature is its moral posture. Dr Bhasin does not write as a technophobe. His voice is measured, self-aware, and resolutely humane. He includes himself among the distracted, acknowledging the near-impossibility of standing entirely outside the systems he critiques. This choice matters. It shifts the book from admonition to conversation, from diagnosis imposed from above to recognition shared among equals.
The first half is analytical, mapping the mechanics of capture with clarity and restraint. The second half is where the book finds its deeper resonance. Here, the author turns toward restoration—not through grand prescriptions or digital-detox manifestos, but through reflections on solitude, silence, and intentional living. Resistance to the attention economy is framed not as a nostalgic retreat to a pre-digital past, but as an ethical practice of presence. To reclaim attention is to reclaim agency. The tone is notably gentle, almost companionable.
If The Age of Noise is concerned with how our present is being eroded, The Mirror of Machines confronts the more vertiginous question of what future we are constructing. Here, Dr Bhasin enters philosophical territory, engaging artificial intelligence not simply as a technological development but as a conceptual and ethical challenge to human identity itself. Chapter titles such as “Digital Doppelgangers,” “Fractured Identities,” and “Humans vs. Machines” signal the book’s central tension: fascination entwined with unease. Dr Bhasin resists the binary impulses that dominate much AI discourse. There is no apocalyptic fear-mongering here, nor any techno-utopian surrender. Instead, the book dwells in uncertainty, asking what it means to create systems that simulate judgment, creativity, and decision-making—capacities once considered uniquely human.
The strength lies precisely in its refusal to conclude neatly. Ethical dilemmas are explored without premature closure. Questions of agency, responsibility, and consciousness are left open—not because the author lacks conviction, but because he recognises that these are collective questions still in formation. The prose feels exploratory, provisional, and intellectually honest, as though the author is thinking in real time with the reader rather than presenting polished certainties. The book culminates in a call for collective consciousness. We are, the author suggests, at a threshold moment. How we choose to think about AI now—how we frame its limits, responsibilities, and place in society—will profoundly shape what follows.
Taken together, these two books speak to different facets of the same wound. One is inward-looking, urging solitude and clarity; the other is outward-facing, demanding collective wisdom and ethical foresight. One confronts distraction; the other confronts replacement. What lingers after reading both is not a set of solutions, but a constellation of urgent inquiries: What are we paying attention to, and at what cost? Who are we becoming alongside our machines? Can we still choose differently? Dr Bhasin leaves these tensions unresolved—and rightly so. In an age where technology captures both our gaze and our reflection, The Age of Noise and The Mirror of Machines offer not answers, but companionship: an intelligent, humane presence in the ongoing struggle to remain attentive, ethical, and fully human.