Agent Palmer

As someone who has, at this point, read almost every easily accessible published work of Douglas Coupland, this book is something of a crescendo.

“Bit Rot” is shorts and essays, from some things I have read and many that are new to me. But it is the crux of the book’s essence that’s amazing to experience.

Now, more than ever, may be the time to unplug, unwind, and spend as much analog time as you possibly can.

At least that’s the argument that I think authors Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar, and Hans Ulrich Obrist have made in “The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.”

If you are a regular viewer of this blog, you may be thinking to yourself, “Palmer reviewing a Coupland book about Marshall McLuhan? Hasn’t this already been done before?”

It has! Back in February of 2024, I reviewed Extraordinary Canadians: Marshall McLuhan by Douglas Coupland. But the thing about reading through an author’s biography is that sometimes they cover a subject more than once.

search| is a project from douglas coupland that came from his artist’s residency at google’s cultures institute lab in paris in the spring of 2015.

it is a deep reflective dive into who we are as a species based on our search data, and there is a lot of search data.

Interspersed with Douglas Coupland’s essays and a Tomb Raider history lesson are actual video game walkthroughs. Step by step instructions for some levels of Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, and Tomb Raider Gold. This is more than your average video game guide, this is what video game guidebooks should strive to be!

The fact that a writer like Coupland could write a first-person Lara Croft essay, as well as his additional thoughts and short history of a game and franchise back in 1998 is amazing.