Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age.

Why do people choose to play with ideas considered antiquated? Why do they elect to act in non-productive ways? Perhaps the question can be asked in reverse: What comes to mind when we think of technology? That which is practical, efficient, invisible, fast, optimistic, constantly updated. So how can one explain the search for the opposite, that which is useless, inefficient, physically present, slow, dystopian, obsolete and governed by chance? The matter of what motivates the search for ‘antiquated’ forms strikes deep into the heart of value. Are people simply following trends? Are they idiots? Are they sentimental? Are they artists? Are they interested in kitsch? Are they uninformed? Are they poets?

Other Paradises is a collection of essays exploring imaginative responses to science and technology, and is about people who choose to build ‘other paradises’, fully conscious of the alternative they offer to the dominant paradigm of technological progress.

Jessica Sequeira is a writer and translator currently living in Santiago de Chile. Apart from this collection of essays she wrote the novel A Furious Oyster (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), the collection of stories Rhombus and Oval (What Books).

“.. Sequeira brings fresh insights to our new machine age and those that have led us here. Technology is at the center of her inquiry, but to call it simply a book about technology would do a disservice to its variety, joy and playfulness. I finished it with the best sort of feeling: the desire to read more. ” – Madeleine Schwartz

Paperback, published in 2018, 140 pages.