The Four-Dimensional Human

In this sequence of almost Montaigne-like essays, blending observation, philosophical inquiry and a highly literary sort of layering, Scott exquisitely articulates not what the digital world can do but how it feels to engage with it. He resists the usual polarisation of debate, capturing instead our “breathless” mix of excitement and unease. Scott’s writing is exceptionally fine, and his cultural range extravagant. Describing YouTube’s “enveloping of the past”, he moves from Ian McEwan to Katie Price. Pondering the phenomenon of digital detox, he recalls EM?Forster’s yearning for the greenwood. He flits from Google’s Desert View to early Christian hermits, from Airbnb to late-Victorian science fiction — and it is always insightful, never pretentious. An astounding debut. * Sunday Times, Thought Book of the Year *
Scott's references are admirably broad, spanning high and low culture in a layered and complex (and Samuel Johnson shortlisted) account. * Financial Times, Books of the Year *
Clever, allusive, with a capacious sense of humour, the book sizzles with intelligence ... brilliant. * New York Times *
Scott is an ideal person to tackle this subject... Moreover, he is both a creative writer and a perceptive literary critic, who leavens his text with some mercurially brilliant turns of phrase and poetic coinages, while at the same time stiffening it up with huge dollops of literary explication and quotation… with his joyful phrase-making and sharp eye for the follies and absurdities of wired life, Scott would be the perfect investigator to report back on what it feels like to be… uploaded. -- Will Self * Guardian *
A book that delivers a nourishing counterpoint to the ephemerality of the digital age. Scott offers layered and complex thought in a style that is elegant and artful. He has worked long and hard, you imagine, at these thoughts and words – and to prove that it can still be done, despite the glow of distraction emanating from a smartphone inevitably sitting on a table nearby, is worth celebrating in itself. -- Sophie Elmhirst * Financial Times *
A real flirt of a book. It’s full of impish gaiety, elegant and lithe in its language, providing intellectual ambushes and startling connections. It examines our evolving notions of publicity, privacy, time-wasting, frivolity, friendship, allegiances, denial, escapism and squalor in the internet age. The teasing, wary optimism is bewitching as well as informative. -- Richard Davenport * Spectator, Christmas Books *
[Laurence Scott's] account of what is becoming of us is often beautiful even if unnerving at times... It is certainly worth our attention. * New Scientist *
A probing and elegant meditation on the digital world’s 'ways of being'... The book is full of artfully concentrated imaginative descriptions... less a commentary on the digital world than a meditation on the many ways our technologies serve as spectral emanations of our inner lives in all their contradictory richness. Beyond the lovely precision of its diction and companionable voice, it is notable for its courage to write from inside the ambiguities and confusions of online life, to resist the easy pleasures of summary judgement. -- Josh Cohen * New Statesman *
This is a brisk, important, funny and thoroughly absorbing work …The allure, edges and routine of the online sphere are explored here with considerable literary flourish. Scott’s sentences fizz with ingenuity and clarity and he observes familiar territory with fresh eyes…This is a serious book that asks serious questions about what our new ways of living is doing to our minds, relationships and the natural world. But this is nevertheless delivered with a jocular and self-skewering touch. -- Simon Parkin * Literary Review *
With a vast range of reference, from Greek myth to Zadie Smith, this is a wonderful debut, precisely observed and crafted with a dazzling intelligence that makes you want to quote whole pages aloud. * Metro *