My relationship with computers began in the late 1970s as a graduate student in Ed Katkin's psychophysiology lab at the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo. Back then, they were called “microprocessors” that we used for real-time control of experimental procedures and data collection. My journey since those days feels like a long one, filled with the many ups and downs that all of us experience in our love/hate relationship with this digital age. I remember angrily smashing my desk chair into the ceiling when I accidentally deleted an almost completed manuscript on my IBM personal computer, learning the hard way the lesson to always back up. I remember my delight the very first time I saw a photograph on my Mac Quadra. In the 1980s, when my students undertook an assignment to analyze the pros and cons of Eliza, the early psychotherapy simulation program, I asked them one day how many of them used this thing called “email.” No one raised a hand. Now they all come to class with phones that guarantee their constant connection to social media, while thinking that email is something their parents use.

This book is an account of my journey as a cyberpsychologist through the decades of this digital age – an account of my insights as a researcher, but also as a citizen of what I still like to call “cyberspace.” By highlighting the basic cyberpsychological principles of our highs and lows in this new digital land, of our love/hate relationship with technology, I hope that this book can serve as a useful resource for anyone who seeks to maximize well-being and compassion in cyberspace, and for my fellow cyberpsychologists who wish to understand the concepts and methods that guided me in my work.

With the rise of the Internet, we have entered a new era in human evolution, and with it the need for a psychology of this digital age. But as the subtitle of this book suggests, our voyage into this new era revives many of the basic triumphs and strife depicted in the classic Eugene O'Neill play Mourning Becomes Electra, which is itself a retelling of the ancient stories of the Oresteia by Aeschylus – archetypal tales of love, aggression, loyalty, betrayal, revenge, and family relationships.