As read on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week
Laurence’s follow-up to The Four-Dimensional Human predicted elements of the fracturing of our shared reality, which is now widely seen as a major threat to healthy political debate and to democracy itself. Picnic Comma Lightning questions the idea of “realness” in a digital world. When we can capture almost every moment on our camera phones, why are people increasingly unable to agree on the facts of what really happened? What is the relationship between social media’s blurring of our public and private lives and our new difficulties in maintaining a stable sense of communal reality?
Follow Laurence on this expansive tour of illusion and fakery, where you’ll encounter influencers and eavesdropping objects, and learn about the overlooked obscenity of Donald Trump. This book considers the future of genuine emotion in a world where our feelings are for sale. How do we find an authentic online voice, when the audiences we address in our social-media posts are unpredictable and unknowable? And when something undeniably real occurs (like the death of a parent, or a bolt of lightning), how does it fit into our digitised experience of reality?
Below are some appearances linked to the publication of Picnic Comma Lightning:
Select reviews and press
The Mail on Sunday
Times Literary Supplement
The Guardian
New Scientist
Wired – Book of the Year
Sunday Times
Evening Standard
New York Times – 5 Questions With
Derren Brown Interview – i-paper