The Age of Earthquakes (Written Response/Pastiche)

Clayton Ray Rountree

3 August 2018

Written Response

After reading The Age of Earthquakes, I’m intrigued by the authors’ choice of text-type, but I partially question the awareness raised by its themes. Borrowing the format of internet sites and social media pages made the content not only interesting and accessible to today’s readers but immersive and effective in delivering ideas. The occasional progress bar at the bottom of pages, for example, is an engaging way of tracking the reader’s “download” progress of the book’s content, while brilliantly commenting on our time perception; we flip through the pages quickly thanks to minimal text usage yet we still are not reading – or “downloading content” one could say – as fast as we expect to be. I appreciate the idea that both “speed” and “memory” are ironically both “irreversibly addictive” in the digital age which is due to the negative impact that rapid information consumption has on our memory of such information. The authors sporadically introducing new, unrelated topics like those we encounter on the internet, allows them to emphasize this. 

I highly regard the many instances in which the language effectively delivered messages. However, I am left to wonder what impact the hyperbolic and generalizing statements (like those implicating that every person has internet access), may have on raising awareness for our behavior in the digital age. Will readers truly question their impact on the world through their individual digital-age behavior? Or, will they lack a sense of responsibility and rather develop a notion that all seven billion people share equal blame for the sociological and environmental issues we face today thanks to the digital age?

Word Count: 268

Source: Basar, Shumon, et al. The Age of Earthquakes: a Guide to the Extreme Present. Penguin Books, 2015.

Pastiche...