Updating McLuhan in Internet age
The Age of Earthquakes Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist Penguin
The Age of Earthquakes is a book that attempts to explain the world today in all its frenzied “extreme present.” In this interview one of the authors, Shumon Basar tells Peter Robb about the ‘why’ of our times. Q Explain the genesis of this project?
A It’s a portrait of our friendship and ongoing interest in the contemporary condition. A few years ago the three of us realized that there hadn’t been a 21st century update of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message for the Internet age. So that’s what we set out to do. Q How did you come to be involved?
A I’ve known Doug and Hans Ulrich for several years. We do many public events together. The book is a crystallization of this conversation in a paper form. It feels natural. Q What is this book about: Human nature. The Internet. Species survival. Explain.
A That’s a toughie! We’d say that it’s a new history of how we are changing and feeling today. And by today we mean this thing we call, ‘The Extreme Present.’ This is when yesterday feels like last century and the future is happening right now. Q Forgive me if this is an inept comparison but this reads almost like a Power Point presentation. Why this format? Are we too easily distracted to take in information in a more complex form?
A It’s an interesting way to see it. It’s true that the atomization of information into smaller and smaller parts (Tweets, Vines, Snapchats, etc.) make our minds more TL;DR (For those who don’t know, Too Long; Didn’t Read) than ever before. We wanted to acknowledge this as a current and real way of reading and digesting information but without sacrificing depth of meaning. It’s for others to say if we have succeeded. Q The old saying is “a little knowledge is dangerous.” Does that make too much knowledge, there is no frame of refer when ence, really scary?
A Ha! That could be a line in the book. Excess of any kind is usually scary. The argument would go that the Internet makes us knowledgeable about many things but in a way that Nicholas Carr calls ‘the shallows.’ It’s an extensive — and promiscuous — kind of knowledge that seems to forfeit depth. Is this good or bad? We’d have to ask Plato. Q How did you three come up with “smupidity?” Why did you come up with it?
A Again, this describes the oxymoronic way in which our brains and we as a species are developing. We have never been smarter but we have also never felt so stupid. It’s so SMUPID. Q Is the world doomed? If not why not, if so why so?
A I once asked Siri this and she gave me a pretty standard Christian eschatological answer. If it’s good enough for Siri, it’s good enough for us. Yes. We are doomed. But it’s more bearable if we’ve got fibre optic broadband.