The End of Absence

PROLOGUE

This Can Show You Everything

1996 Malaysia

THE settlement called Batu Lima sat deep in the tropical forests of eastern Malaysia, about three miles from the closest real village. Its one-room houses, largely abandoned or dismantled by the time our story begins, stood on stilts, with floors of bamboo. One family was left made up of Siandim Gunda, Jimi Sinting, and their twelve children. One daughter, Linda Jimi, was fourteen years old and ready to leave.

There was a box with four little legs in their house, and in the box was a black-and-white television. There was no electricity (Linda was tasked with gathering firewood for the kitchen stove each day), but on special occasions, Linda s father would take the car battery that powered the TV into the village and have it charged. Then Linda could watch Sesame Street, which was senseless but wonderful, with its American children and Muppets prattling in confounding English, playing out their deeply foreign antics.

Big Bird was yellow, Linda learned. The village children had electricity and color televisions; they would brag about their colors. Linda said, I know, and told the other children that her family had colors, too.

Sesame Street was baffling, but Linda s family believed intrinsically in spirits and ghosts, so the apparitions that flashed on the television screen could be folded into a larger trust in magic, in brushes with the unknowable.

Besides, more magical by far was the komburongoh that Linda s grandmother Sukat wielded. Linda never touched the sacred object herself, for fear of angering the spirits and growing sick but she could look across the hut at the thing in her grandmother s hands, a tight bundle of teeth taken from several animals, knotted together with a collection of small bones. Sukat, who could handle the komburongoh with impunity, had access to the spirit of an ancestor, and she could call upon the spirit

MICHAEL HARRIS is the author of The End of Absence, which won the Governor General s Literary Award and became a national bestseller. He writes about media, civil liberties, and the arts, for dozens of publications, including The Washington Post, Wired, Salon, The Huffington Post, and The Globe & Mail.  His work has been a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize, the CBC Bookie Awards, and several National Magazine Awards. He lives in Vancouver with his partner, the artist Kenny Park. MichaelJohnHarris.com

"The End of Absence is a genial and philosophical tour through one man s anxieties surrounding digital life.
The New York Times

"Harris has caught, with brilliant fidelity and incisiveness, a hinge-point in modern history: Before and After the Digital Rapture. The End of Absence deserves a place alongside Neil Postman s Amusing Ourselves to Death and Sherry Turkle s Life on the Screen. A great, important (and fun) read. I couldn t in good conscience lend out my copy: every other page is dog-eared."
Bruce Grierson, author of What Makes Olga Run?

This is a lovely, direct, and beautifully written book that will make you feel good about living in the times we do. Michael Harris is honest in a way I find increasingly rare: clear, truthful, and free of vexation. A true must-read.
Douglas Coupland, author of Worst. Person. Ever. and Generation X

The End of Absence is a beautifully written and surprisingly rousing book. Michael Harris scans the flotsam of our everyday, tech-addled lives and pulls it all together to create a convincing new way to talk about our relationship with the Internet. He has taken the vague technological anxiety we all live with and shaped it into a bold call for action.
Steven Galloway, author of The Confabulist and The Cellist of Sarajevo

Everybody over sixty should read this book. The rest of the population will need no urging, unless they are too far gone to read anything longer than a blurb. The first part reads like a horror story, a shocking mind-thriller. In the second half the author, despite real foreboding, demonstrates in his own person that all is far from lost. Relief, after much learning.
Margaret Visser, author of Much Depends on Dinner

In this thoughtful, well-written book, Michael Harris combines personal narrative with the views of experts to show us that the digital revolution that envelops