The Four-Dimensional Human
Ways of Being in the Digital World
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- USD 10.99
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- USD 10.99
Descripción editorial
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2015
WINNER OF THE JERWOOD PRIZE
ONE OF WIRED's NON-FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE
We spend more time than ever online, and the digital revolution is rewiring our sense of what it means to be human. Smartphones let us live in one another's pockets, while websites advertise our spare rooms all across the world. Never before have we been so connected. Increasingly we are coaxed from the three-dimensional world around us and into the wonders of a fourth dimension, a world of digitised experiences in which we can project our idealised selves.
But what does it feel like to live in constant connectivity? What new pleases and anxieties are emerging with our exposure to this networked world? How is the relationship to our bodies changing as we head deeper into digital life? Most importantly, how do we exist in public with these recoded inner lives, and how do we preserve our old ideas of isolation, disappearance and privacy on a Google-mapped planet?
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Scott, an essayist and critic, offers a rich phenomenology of living in the digital age and its radical reshaping of fundamental human experiences. Based on the premise that "a culture reveals much about itself by the metaphors it uses," Scott sees in the early Internet conceptualized by denizens as a "mode of transportation" for anonymous, disembodied selves a parallel to the late-Victorian fascination with "the fourth dimension," popularly understood as "a space into which one might travel, a world that could be reached if only the right conduit or portal could be found." But when the "civic and commercial conservatism" of late capitalism "fuses with the true radicalism of digital life," the result is our current claustrophobia. Scott sketches the artistic, political, and environmental corollaries to show how "digital life is inherently suited to a language of the macabre and the monstrous." His keen attention to our digital diction is at its best in a brilliant analysis of our tendency to tag variegated online browsing as kinds of porn. Unlike many literary grumps, Scott writes eruditely from an embedded perspective shared by anyone who has ever settled an argument with a quick search of IMDb. Greek mythology and Dorian Gray come into play, not as fearful salvos against imagined hordes of digital barbarians, but rather used alongside pop culture as living artifacts whose interpretive value is up to the task of better understanding our lives now. Scott's sharp eye for irony and great wit make this debut a lively contribution to the conversation about the effects of the Internet on society.
