{"title":"Laurence Scott","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover the insightful essays and cultural commentary of Laurence Scott. Perfect for readers who enjoy thoughtful explorations of modern life, technology, and society's evolving landscape. Browse his captivating works.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"four-dimensional-human-book-laurence-scott-9780434023110","title":"The Four-Dimensional Human","description":"SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2015  WINNER OF THE JERWOOD PRIZE  ‘Mercurially brilliant’ Will Self  'A richly complex portayal of the ways we live today' TLS  ‘A delightfully tender and humane guide to transformations that might amaze Ovid and new forms of nostalgia to rival Proust’ Alexandra Harris  ‘Entertaining and insightful’ Sunday Times  ‘Elegant and artful’ Financial Times  A constellation of everyday digital phenomena is rewiring our inner lives. We are increasingly coaxed from the three-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, friendship, commerce, pursuit and escape, and moving from Hamlet to the ghosts of social media, from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, from Facebook politics to Oedipus, The Four-Dimensional Human is a highly original and pioneering portrait of life in a digital landscape.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516549406993,"sku":"GOR006685555","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49915369455889,"sku":"GOR007334801","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52116686733585,"sku":"GOR009075215","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0434023116.jpg?v=1751040134"},{"product_id":"picnic-comma-lightning-book-laurence-scott-9781786090027","title":"Picnic Comma Lightning","description":"**A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK**   'Laurence Scott … writes beautifully about the experience of reality in the digital age, and about how grief changes our perceptions … I’m besotted with Scott’s writing.' Derren Brown, i paper   'Clever, funny and deeply moving... an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life.' Mail on Sunday  'A stylish, playful exploration of what digital life is doing to the way we find meaning in the world.' Guardian, 'Book of the Week'  ________________________  In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the narrator offers a memorably brief account of his mother’s death: 'picnic, lightning'. Picnic Comma Lightning similarly opens with the death of Laurence Scott's parents, and the definitive ending of their deaths raises for him one fundamental question: how much of what we live through is truly real?   With humour and insight, Scott transforms this personal meditation on loss into an exploration of what it means to exist in the world now. It used to be that our vision of the world was rooted to reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. But today, in an age of constant internet debates, online personas and alternative truths, reality feels more vulnerable than ever before.    Picnic Comma Lightning looks at how digital life is distorting, echoing and magnifying our age-old preoccupation with what is real and what isn't. Where do we draw the line? How is technology shifting these boundaries? And how do we maintain a sense of reality in an increasingly unreal world?  ________________________ 'A report from the front line of the digital generation by someone superbly well-equipped to read and decode the signals.' 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Smartphones let us live in one another's pockets, while websites advertise our spare rooms all across the world. Never before have we been so connected. Increasingly we are coaxed from the three-dimensional world around us and into the wonders of a fourth dimension, a world of digitised experiences in which we can project our idealised selves.   But what does it feel like to live in constant connectivity? What new pleases and anxieties are emerging with our exposure to this networked world? How is the relationship to our bodies changing as we head deeper into digital life? Most importantly, how do we exist in public with these recoded inner lives, and how do we preserve our old ideas of isolation, disappearance and privacy on a Google-mapped planet?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543537852689,"sku":"GOR007592785","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49726435623185,"sku":"NGR9780099591894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52136203223313,"sku":"GOR009815103","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53348507648273,"sku":"GOR008714785","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099591898.jpg?v=1750843114"},{"product_id":"picnic-comma-lightning-book-laurence-scott-9781785151118","title":"Picnic Comma Lightning","description":"**A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK**  'A stylish, playful exploration of what digital life is doing to the way we find meaning in the world.' Guardian, 'Book of the Week'  'A report from the front line of the digital generation by someone superbly well-equipped to read and decode the signals.' Sunday Times  'A bravura investigation of our turbulent times.' New Scientist  'Clever, funny and deeply moving... an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the fakery of modern life.' Mail on Sunday ________________________ A spellbinding examination of the nature of reality, by one of the brightest thinkers of today.  Cognitive science proposes that we have evolved to build mental maps of the world not according to its actual, physical nature, but according to what allows us to thrive. In other words, our individual and collective realities are fictions – carefully constructed to enable us to maintain our particular perspectives.   It used to be that our fictions were rooted to reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Today, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming more flimsy and more vulnerable than ever before.  Ours is now a zoomed-in perspective, where the backstage is centre stage. We are both camera person and subject, with new powers and new weaknesses.  Our personal and political spheres are dangerously merging. How will the form and grammar of our feelings have to change in this over-exposed environment? Should any of our stories remain secret? How are these phenomena changing the way we live? How do we maintain a sense of reality in an increasingly fantastic world?  Picnic Comma Lightning is an innovative examination of the nature of reality in the twenty-first century, one that explores the key ethical, political and neurological forces contouring our inner selves, but also the old influences of grief and desire, memory and imagination. In it, award-winning author Laurence Scott provides a lively and accessible new philosophy for this epoch in Western civilisation, one that will change the way you see the world, and your place within it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49557650637073,"sku":"GOR009143120","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49583589327121,"sku":"GOR009151736","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49897110438161,"sku":"CIN1785151118G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51564335694097,"sku":"GOR009599680","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1785151118.jpg?v=1751427536"},{"product_id":"four-dimensional-human-book-laurence-scott-9780393353075","title":"The Four-Dimensional Human","description":"Each of us exists in three-dimensional, physical space. But, as a constellation of everyday digital phenomena rewires our lives, we are increasingly coaxed from the containment of our predigital 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?   Laurence Scott—hailed as a \"New Generation Thinker\" by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC—shows how this four-dimensional life is dramatically changing us by redefining our social lives and extending the limits of our presence in the world. Blending tech-philosophy with insights on everything from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, Scott stands with a rising generation of social critics hoping to understand our new reality. His virtuosic debut is a revelatory and original exploration of life in the digital age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349878214929,"sku":"CIN0393353079G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50956734726417,"sku":"CIN0393353079VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51232005587217,"sku":"GOR014203976","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53104853745937,"sku":"GOR014743008","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53353253011729,"sku":"GOR012021093","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393353079.jpg?v=1751450484"},{"product_id":"jerwood-fvu-awards-2016-borrowed-time-karen-kramer-alice-may-williams-book-laurence-scott-9781904270409","title":"Jerwood\/FVU Awards 2016: ‘Borrowed Time’: Karen Kramer, Alice May Williams","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51419835367697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51419835433233,"sku":"NGR9781904270409","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1904270409.jpg?v=1751448247"},{"product_id":"simon-english-book-laurence-scott-9781911164777","title":"Simon English","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51575458234641,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51575458496785,"sku":"GOR010280527","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911164775.jpg?v=1750997143"},{"product_id":"picnic-comma-lightning-book-laurence-scott-9780393609974","title":"Picnic Comma Lightning","description":"In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert offers a memorably brief account of his parents’ death: “picnic, lightning.” Picnic Comma Lightning, too, opens with death—that of Laurence Scott’s mother—because, for a philosopher, death raises a profound existential question: How do we know what is real, especially when we have come to question the reality of so many of our day-to-day experiences? Writing from the intersection of philosophy, politics, and memoir, Scott transforms his personal meditation on loss into a beguiling exploration of what it means to exist in the world today.   It used to be that our lives were rooted in reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Now, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming flimsier and more vulnerable than ever before. Scott’s far-ranging examination charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray. 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 about reality are ruptured by incontrovertible facts (like the death of a parent or a bolt of lightning). “A report from the front line of the online generation” (Sunday Times), Picnic Comma Lightning is an essential account of how we’ve started to make sense of our strange new world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51687551140113,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51687551828241,"sku":"CIN0393609979G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393609979.jpg?v=1751072004"},{"product_id":"mooted-question-and-other-rhymes-book-laurence-scott-9783337271091","title":"The mooted question and other rhymes","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52678872793361,"sku":"NLS9783337271091","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9783337271091.jpg?v=1762309210"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-laurence-scott.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}