Facebooking the Anthropocene in Raja Ampat

Overview

A deeply intimate look at the cataclysmic shifts between humans, technology, and the so-called natural world

Despite the breakneck pace of both technological advance and environmental collapse, Robert Ostertag explores how we ourselves are changing as fast as the world around us—from how we make music, to how we have sex, to what we do to survive, and who we imagine ourselves to be. And though the environmental crisis terrifies and technology overwhelms, Ostertag finds enough creativity, compassion, and humor in our evolving behavior to keep us laughing and inspired as the world we are building overtakes the world we found. Ostertag fuses his travels as a touring musician with his journalist's eye for detail and the long view of a historian. Our best writers have struggled with how to address the catastrophes of our time without looking away. Ostertag succeeds where others have failed, with the moral acuity of Susan Sontag, the technological savvy of Lewis Mumford, and the biting humor of Jonathan Swift.

Reviews

"This is global reporting at its best, a pointillistic portrait of the troubles of our time rendered in riotous detail. It reads like a riff, not a sermon." —Richard Manning, author of Go Wild "Facebooking the Anthropocene in Raja Ampat takes us through the grim dystopic world that we live in, but somehow we also witness the resilience of the human spirit, including its queer dimension. A joyful read." —Dédé Oetomo, queer activist and independent scholar "A horrifying, exhilarating, hilarious and jaw-dropping glimpse of our present and future—as Ostertag details how even the most remote desert islands on our planet are becoming rapidly infected and influenced by the consumerism, technology, and plastic garbage that the rest of us have long-ago surrendered to." —George Brant, author of Grounded, Elephant's Graveyard, and other plays "If you want an insightful, witty panorama of this brave new world we are making, follow Bob Osterlag around it for a year—or read this book." —Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike! and Global Village or Global Pillage? "With deep intelligence and an acute and off-center sensibility, Bob Ostertag gives us a riveting and highly personalized view of globalization, from the soaring skyscapes of Shanghai to the darkened alleys of Yogyakarta." —Frances Fox Piven, coauthor of Regulating the Poor and Poor People's Movements

Author Biography

Bob Ostertag has published more than twenty albums of music, five books, and a feature film.