The Age of Earthquakes is a primitive text that is conscientious of both its nonlinear narrative structure and its message to address the ultimate fear that embodies our societal culture involving technology: homogeneity. At first, the book presents itself to being incohesive, its linear progression is constantly being disrupted by spontaneous gestures. In actuality, the intentions are less superficial: the book mimics accordingly to emphasize how incohesive our technological culture is. As the author put it: " the ultimate sequencing dysfunction is the inability to look at one's life as a meaningful sequence or story." And this message is constantly being fortified because of the inconsistent pacing that causes there to be a detraction of information. The long narrative examples and the diverse amount of ramified ideas end up causing for there to be an overflow of information, a lack of retainment. Thus, the decision to simply associate with the fabricated and largely fonted words rather than the explanation itself devalues diverse expression, an important aspect to individuality. And to extrapolate, the author's reflection of this dependent superficial intimacy with modern culture implies the embarkment of homogeneity.
Although there is an appreciation towards the concerns of technology, the books portrayal is contentious. I believe that its cynical approach on the community being oblivious because "everyone uses the internet" isn't generalizable towards the population. The author's belief the " Internet is cancelling all parties" isn't accurate because the "sense of one's community" varies infinitely than just the Internet. Furthermore, the direct addresses towards the audience connotes to it being didactic. If anything, the author's overgeneralizaiton and didactic attitude would be curt and unappreciative to the humanities because of the lack of consideration of other contributing factors.
Christopher Pham, Period 3A, Ms. Hendricks
[283 Words]
Partmoval
(n.) party + removal
The process which one becomes unaffiliated with their party
because they have become useless. In the future, there will
be no more parties that are being represented by anyone.
The boredom from the controversies between parties
creates a new community: the Internet.
The boredom from the controversies between parties
creates a new community: the Internet.
I agree that the book's claims are tenuous at best, due to how the text is structured. Since it is rife with paradox and irony in an attempt to emulate the internet, the book refutes itself. In doing this, it might reveal the internet's own contradictory nature. If this holds true, do you think that it would be enough to give credence to the more direct claims made within the novel?
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