Cultural Studies / Contemporary Art History

0-920159-94-X - May 2002

$29.95 CDN / $20.50 US

6.5 x 8.25 - 384 pages - 10 b&w photos - paper

BISAC: ART023000 - TEC052000

Author: Tom Sherman 
Edited By: Peggy Gale

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Contributors to this book

"Sherman integrates a deeply critical perspective on modern life with an understanding and sense of hopefulness that denies cynicism [and] defies ideological categorization. Read Sherman slowly and then re-read. You will find his to be one of the most original and powerful voices of a generation."
- David A. Ross

"Tom Sherman is an artist who has drawn deeply on his study of communications, the information economy, and natural science. His writing works with and between these disciplines, postulating new ideas and congruencies, revealing possible truths for our future. In some cases, speculation has become prophetic fact."
- Peggy Gale, Preface

"I'm 'blanking' on the 'i-bomb.' I'm 'buffeted by the message storm' in Tom Sherman's poetic semi-fictional polemic on 'the slow burn of telecommunications through the late 20th century.' So, 'don't check for my pulse. I just want to be a dial tone.'"
- John Oswald, Perpetrator of Plunderphonics

There was a time, not too long ago, when people wrote letters (and mailed them), picked up the phone and spoke to people (not voice mail systems), and considered whether to invest in expensive new "fax" technology as a means of speeding up communication. Children went outside to play games that didn't require a console and screen, schools bought books, and computers filled entire floors of some offices. In less than twenty years, our homes, schools, cars, workplaces, and leisure activities have been revolutionized by the onslaught of technology.

Tom Sherman, part artist, part writer, and part visionary, got wired early and has spent much of his career leading the way through the aftershocks of the "I-Bomb" and its information revolution. Before and After the I-Bomb collects some of the best of Sherman's thinking and writing about art, nature, and technology from the last two decades. His series of personal reflections express both a love for and struggle with the new technologies and the cultural changes they have spawned. Most importantly they provide an instrument for gauging the evolution of a human culture inextricably bound to Earth's ecosystem, and a tool for negotiating the future, even if it is currently "obscured by a dense cloud of scrambled technobabble."

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