The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present is a book written by British writer and curator Shumon Basar, Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland, and Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. It was published in 2015 by Penguin Books in the UK, Blue Rider Press in the U.S. and Eichborn in Germany.

Modelled around the influential 1967 paperback The Medium is the Massage, by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel — which was first published by Penguin Books in the UK — The Age of Earthquakes updates McLuhan's prophetic 20th century pronouncements to the Internet addled, 21st century. "The unpredictable side effects of technology are what dictate the future – there is always an excess to what we invent," say Basar/Coupland/Obrist, "we would argue that it's those excess effects... that produce the most radical – and also sometimes most unsettling – moral, philosophical, social and cultural transformations." The book's abiding premise, therefore, is that, "We haven't just changed our brains these past few years. We've changed the structure of the planet".

The Age of Earthquakes is directly inspired by Quentin Fiore's experimental style he made famous in The Medium is the Massage. For The Age of Earthquakes, graphic designer Wayne Daly took familiar visual cues from contemporary apps and other screen based matter, and translated them onto the printed page, in stark black and white. The text — written and collated by Basar/Coupland/Obrist — appears as aphoristic phrases and quotes. Some pages are left blank, while others require the reader to rotate the book 90 degrees, reminiscent of the portrait/horizontal modes on mobile phones. The reading experience emulates what Fiore achieved with The Medium is the Massage: to create "a dialogue between the computer and the book."

Most of the images in the book were generated from a process entitled "mindsourcing." The manuscript was sent to 35 artists, from all over the world, some born after 1989, several born before 1945, who were asked to respond with relevant visual work.

They are Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Gabriele Basilico, Alessandro Bava, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cécile B. Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Pattison, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir and Trevor Yeung.

Pacific Standard magazine described it as "a kind of philosophical Anarchist Cookbook for the online era"; Jon Snow on Channel 4 News called it "absolutely amazing"; Vice.com characterised it as "a new philosophy-cum-modern-self-help book"; and Dazed said it was a "guidebook, map for today and mediation on the madness of our media, it's an awesome, dizzying read." However, The Los Angeles Times accused it of being, "a project that looks backward, rather than ahead,; and Kirkus Reviews said, "its hipper-than-thou self-satisfaction runs close to the surface of a superficial book." Jarvis Cocker dedicated one of his last BBC Radio 6 Music Sunday Service programs to The Age of Earthquakes. Cocker interviewed Basar and Coupland, in a montage of music and words that echoed the experience of the book. (Wikipedia)

many thanks to Patrick for recommending me this. it was amazing. ( )

The perfect gift for stoners and deep-thinking teenagers. ( )

For those of us who manage to find the time (and a space filled with solitude) to carefully ponder the world around us through a printed page, know the feeling of uneasiness that we feel for the present world. Things are changing. Our minds are changing. Our feelings are changing. But how? Reading and pondering The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present may be that starting point for a discussion on our changing society.

http://tinyurl.com/pdd5wmn ( )

This is a difficult book to describe. You can read it in an hour or so. Most of the pages have fewer than 50 words. Many of them have definitions of new words, usually a combination of old words made into something dystopian. The book leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that all is not right in the world. Then you realize – so what else is new?

It really means that Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock of fifty years ago has finally arrived. Things are moving so fast we can’t adjust and accommodate. Even if we tried, the world would have moved on to something else before we got anywhere. So confusion and lack of direction reign.

The words on the page are a cross between a Steven Wright one liner and a Haiku for millennials:
-It turns out computer games merely teach you how to play other computer games.
-A one way trip to Mars would be okay if it had smoking-hot wifi.
-What if there were a drug that made you feel more like yourself?

As you would expect from the co-authors, most of the references are to the internet. The memes are multiple choice dropdowns, fill-in boxes, and radio buttons. That is the normal frame of reference for people who have grown up with the internet always available. Reading The Age of Earthquakes is like living an episode of Black Mirror. It’s all very realistic, very possible, and very downbeat. It’s an emotional warning.

David Wineberg ( )