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Planet Earth needs a self-help book, and this is it

The future is happening to us far faster than we thought it would and this book explains why

Fifty years after Marshall McLuhan´s ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture The Medium is the Massage , Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that´s redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the ´extreme present´.

The Age of Earthquakes is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and ´mindsource´ images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly´s striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It´s like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read.

Welcome to The Age of Earthquakes , a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn´t just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it´s also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket.

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Brainy book that will rock your world Evening Standard

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Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and writer. Since 2006 he has been co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, London. He is the author of Ways of Curating and, with Ai Weiwei, of Ai Weiwei Speaks .

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