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Picnic Comma Lightning

Audiobook
Nonfiction: Self-Help, Psychology
Unabridged   875 hour(s)
Publication date: 11/12/2019

Picnic Comma Lightning

The Experience of Reality in the Twenty-First Century

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781684419579
Digital Download ISBN:9781684419586

Summary

What does it mean to be human in the twenty-first century? In this innovative examination of our present reality, award-winning writer Laurence Scott charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray.

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Product Description

A lively and accessible existentialism for our times.

What does it mean to be human in the twenty-first century? How do we be real people in a world of online personas and "authentic" simulated experiences? In this innovative examination of our present reality, award-winning writer Laurence Scott charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray.

Effortlessly applying philosophy to the quotidian, Scott "makes banal things shimmer with meaning" (Guardian). He ponders how ubiquitous cameras reframe our private lives (an event only exists once someone posts the video), how mysterious algorithms undermine our attempts at self-definition through their own data-driven portraits, and what happens in those moments when our illusions of reality are ruptured by incontrovertible facts (like the death of a parent or a bolt of lightning).

Virtuosic and intellectually delightful, Picnic Comma Lightning is an astounding account of how we have started to make sense of our strange new world.

Reviews/Praise

“[A]cutely perceptive … delivers a thoughtful message about finding an authentic way to live at a time when reality itself can seem built on shifting sands.” —Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Laurence Scott's essays and criticism have appeared on NewYorker.com and in the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. He is a lecturer in writing at New York University in London, and lives in London.