Unflattening

Sousanis argues that the ruts that have flattened our experience are not intrinsic to human nature but a product of our ancestors and the systems they invented. Both through text and image, he uses the metaphor of a river current to show how repeated human actions create momentum, and how potentially contrary, idiosyncratic ideas “borne by individuals […] are in turn swept away by the current” (Location 119). When we are born, we arrive “midstream” in this standardizing system, and we do not get much of a chance to define ourselves against it before the educational and professional spheres begin to shape us (Location 120). Sousanis illustrates this phenomenon in his first chapter with the example of a rounded, curious infant becoming a stooped adult automaton (Location 21). Unless we are lucky enough to reach a state of awareness, we find ourselves becoming flattened by default.

The benefit of flattening and losing what distinguishes us as individuals is efficiency—in other words, attaining maximum productivity. Although he does not name labor economist Fredrick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), Sousanis features his assembly-line style of production in the first chapter, depicting different stages of mechanical production in which man is both the orchestrator and the final product.