翻译题 46.Reality is usually one step ahead of the language we possess to describe it. People began taking pictures of themselves long before the Oxford English Dictionary selected "selfie" as its 2013 Word of the Year. Friends e-mailed each other pictures of cats longing for cheezburgers without knowing they were sharing a " meme". This language lag time makes it difficult to understand the present as it unfurls. Or, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein might say, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
Our new book, The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, tries to fill that gap. Part poetic manifesto, part postmodern dictionary, the text explores how technology is reinventing such fundamental things as time, individuality and class. Which of today's universal experiences, we asked, would seem utterly alien to a version of us from two decades ago?
Co-authors Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist and I turned our answers into new words that describe the effects of digital technology and the Internet on everything from our brains to the planet. You've all felt these things happening to you. But you didn't have names for them yet. Well, now you do.