The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World

A revelatory exploration of life in the digital age

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2015 WINNER OF THE JERWOOD PRIZE ONE OF WIRED’s NON-FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE

We spend more time than ever online, and the digital revolution is rewiring our sense of what it means to be human. 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?