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Monday, July 20, 2015
brief book reviews: Unflattening
In Unflattening, Nick Sousanis writes that we need to “discover new ways of seeing, to open spaces for possibilities. It is about finding different perspectives.”
Stereoscopic vision reveals “that a single, ‘true’ perspective is false.”
Comics “allow for the integration and incorporation of multiple modes and signs and symbols.”
We all have “the capacity to host a multiplicity of worlds inside us,” so “we emerge with the possibility to become something different.”
We’re like the drones in Lang’s Metropolis, and like puppets who discover we have strings, and like the two-dimensional figures in Abbott’s Flatland.
There’s even a quote from Kahlil Gibran.
The whole argument is, more or less, contained in this image. If all this strikes you as profound or provocative, maybe you’ll like the book.
Stereoscopic vision reveals “that a single, ‘true’ perspective is false.”
Comics “allow for the integration and incorporation of multiple modes and signs and symbols.”
We all have “the capacity to host a multiplicity of worlds inside us,” so “we emerge with the possibility to become something different.”
We’re like the drones in Lang’s Metropolis, and like puppets who discover we have strings, and like the two-dimensional figures in Abbott’s Flatland.
There’s even a quote from Kahlil Gibran.
The whole argument is, more or less, contained in this image. If all this strikes you as profound or provocative, maybe you’ll like the book.
Labels:
graphic novels,
graphic review,
images
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About
Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what's fun?
Alan Jacobs
Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University and the author, most recently, of How to Think and The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography. His homepage is here.

Sites of Interest
How to Read Well in an Age of Distraction
Watch video of Alan Jacobs discussing his book in a Washington, D.C. lecture in June 2011.

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