Laurence Scott

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.

A constellation of everyday digital phenomena is rewiring our inner lives, argues Laurence Scott. We are increasingly coaxed from the third-dimensional containment of our pre-digital selves into a wonderful and eerie fourth dimension, a world of ceaseless communication, instant information and global connection.Our portals to this new world have been wedged open, and the silhouette of a figure is slowly taking shape. But what does it feel like to be four-dimensional? How do digital technologies influence the rhythms of our thoughts, the style and tilt of our consciousness? What new sensitivities and sensibilities are emerging with our exposure to the delights, sorrows and anxieties of a networked world? And how do we live in public, with these recoded private lives?Tackling ideas of time, space, isolation, silence and threat – how our modern-day anxieties manifest online – and moving from Hamlet to the ghosts of social media, from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, from Twitter art to Oedipus, The Four-Dimensional Human is a highly original and pioneering portrait of life in a digital landscape.

George Scott, born in Winnebago, Wisconsin in 1866 into a prosperous craftsman’s family, is a cocksure and willful boy, but eagerly learns his father’s trade. He is drawn to the lifestyle of the native Americans living nearby, from whom he learns hunting, trapping, and survival skills. Always a misfit in school, he drops out at age twelve, packs his rifle, bedroll, and a few necessities on his horse, Banjo, and sets out on the long journey to Texas to become a cowboy on the Chisholm Trail. When the advancing railroads make the Trail obsolete, he begins a new career, supplying wild meat to railroad work crews. When refrigerated cars put him out of his job, he settles down for a couple of years as a ranch hand, but a cruel winter that kills millions of range cattle bankrupts the ranch, and forces him to move on. Follow his exploits as life leads him to become a rustler, then a rancher, then a pioneer of sorts, fighting hardships and hostile Indians as he takes his young wife and her illegitimate son on a perilous covered-wagon journey to claim a New Mexico homestead. Yet more danger and twists of fate await him as the twentieth century dawns and his iron will is tested again and again.

This is a collection of stories about life in the USA, ranging from racism in the Arizona desert during the Great Depression, to a present-day dilemma in which a family living in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood must cope with an outlaw biker inheriting the house next door, to a future in which people can remotely experience life as one of many animal species, through a thrilling but expensive diversion called brainriding.

The family car is packed and ready for the move from Ohio to California, but Willy the Pup and Leona the Mystery Cat are nowhere to be found, despite a frantic search.With heavy hearts, the little family of four must leave without their pets. Willy had fallen asleep in the park and hadn’t heard the family calling, but Leona had. All the time, she was perched in a tree, watching the moving van being loaded. She didn’t want to move, and simply didn’t believe the family would leave without her. Now, despite their differences, Willy and Leona must work together as they set off to find their family.

Education Publishing Pub 2018-10-01 264 Chinese Zhejiang Education Press We are a maverick four-dimensional human. the four-dimensional digital world has changed the way we live and think. The four-dimensional era redefines th...

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