I read The Age of Earthquakes last night. I forget how I came across it, but it's been on my bedside table for a month or two now. I might describe it as the Be Here Now of the digital age.
High praise, indeed. I couldn't put it down.
There's mixed reactions out there about it. I'd venture to say that's because many readers feel indicted somehow. I know I did. There were definitely moments that made me question my relationship to all things digital. There were also moments that felt concise, clear, and poignant.
This book is a trip.
Some of my favorite portions were...
'We haven't just changed the structure of our brains these past few years. We've changed the structure of our Planet.'
'By rewiring our brains on the internet, we've tampered with the old-fashioned organic perception of time.'
'The natural human attention span is the length of a Beatles song.'
'Time snack (v.) - Often annoying moments of pseudo-leisure created by computers when they stop to save a file or to search for software updates or merely to mess with your mind.'
'Memory is irreversibly addictive.'
'The future loves you but it doesn't need you.'
'We all should give ourselves a pat on the back for absorbing as much technology as quickly as we have.'
'I miss getting emails from Nigerian princes.'
'Bored people crave war. Fact.'
'There's no shopping in Star Wars.'
'Healthy people are bad for capitalism.'
'A one-way trip to Mars would actually be okay if it had smoking hot wifi.'