Oil prices are skyrocketing hundreds of dollars by the barrel. Explosions sound off. The sky blackens. Earth falls under siege.

And somewhere in the midst of all this, a group of strangers have barricaded themselves in an airport cocktail lounge, hiding from the watchful eye of a sharpshooter bent on revenge.
Welcome to Douglas Coupland’s future – the future, at least, in his new book Player One: What Is To Become of Us.

Written as part of the 2010 CBC Massey Lecture series, Player One was recently longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Almost 20 years displaced from his breakthrough novel Generation X (mention it and he’ll leave to grab a sandwich and skip the question), Coupland is as sharp as ever.
His delicate way of being both profound and humorous, quite often in the same sentence, is still intact.

His characters are new, but it feels like we’ve met them all before – lost, jaded, disillusioned and inquisitive.

While Coupland, 48, travels across Canada with the book as part of the Massey Lectures, he stops at the University of Winnipeg on Friday, Oct. 15 to talk about Marshall McLuhan.

While we hope his idea of the Apocalypse is purely fictional, The Uniter sent Coupland some questions by e-mail asking what he truly thinks of what will become of us.

The Uniter: Storytelling and communication are often big themes in your writing. However, with technology pushing communication in new directions, we’re ultimately allowing ourselves to be reduced to speaking in 140 characters or less.

Douglas Coupland: I have a theory that the normal human attention span for anything is about the length of a Beatles song, which is just about how much time passes when you’re at a computer before your brain feels the need to skip to another window or go to a new link. Coincidence? No. It’s how we’re wired.

E-mail replaced the letter.

It certainly did. I hear Canada Post is imploding. And I’m guessing that because you’re in university, you’ve probably never received a paper letter in your life.

Where do you see communication going in the next decade?

Shorter. More targeted. And if you’re asking me to describe the next Google or something, it’s not going to happen here.  See? I used an emoticon.

What do you think is in store the next decade?

At the moment humanity reminds me of those dogs you see leashed to the front railing of the supermarket, staring at the door with misty eyes waiting for the owners to return and complete them. Whenever a plane lands, the MOMENT it hits the ground, out come the PDAs. Whenever people meet for dinner, the FIRST thing they do is put their PDA on the table… it’s like a new form of courtesy.

And we’re only going to see more of this. Frankly, I like having Google at the table – it makes for richer conversations and gives the truth instead of urban-legendy nothingness.

What will be the technology or event that defines us?

Probably an event fostered by technology. I was at a writers retreat in Florida and every day drove past the flight school while those 9-11 guys were in there learning how to fly jets. (But not land – didn’t that ring anyone’s alarm bells?) So you never know.

What new technologies do you envision in the future?

Ah… you’re again trying to trick me into revealing the next Google. Not here.

Not today.

How do you see the next generation adapting to all of this change?

I don’t really think in generations. The whole X/Y thing has always been a big question mark floating above my head. But I think that people in general will cope just fine. They always do. People invented all of this technology, not aliens – so whatever we do is only going to magnify or amplify or squelch some dimension of our humanity. Having said that, we are a wretched species and we should all be beaten with sticks.

“ People invented all of this technology, not aliens – so whatever we do is only going to magnify or amplify or squelch some dimension of our humanity. Having said that, we are a wretched species and we should all be beaten with sticks.

Are we bored as a species?

Ask yourself this: Could you tolerate living, say, 20 years ago, with (comparatively) zero information, slow expensive everything, a nascent Internet (that had nowhere to go to, even if you were on it,) and I could go on and on. In 1990, rock videos were still considered cutting edge. I mean, once you upgrade computers you can never go back to your sack-of-shit former computer. Once you get used to a certain sense of hyper connectedness, you can’t go back to a lessened state. The train only goes forward.

Will we ever reach Mars?

The problem with Mars isn’t distance. It’s time. Science just can’t figure out how to locate or create human beings who won’t go apeshit crazy being locked inside a juice box for 24 months each way. The only way Mars will ever happen is if we perfect hibernation.

What’s next in the human evolution process?

It’s going to have to be scientific selection. We have no choice. It’s 150 years ahead (and it kills me I won’t be there to see it play out) but the planet can’t sustain six billion carnivorous primates, so something’s got to give. You know it. I know it.

Douglas Coupland’s recent work includes a biography of Marshall McLuhan, published this past spring as part of Penguin’s “Extraordinary Canadians” series (edited by John Ralston Saul). Coupland will appear at the University of Winnipeg on Friday, Oct. 15 as part of the conference “Marshall McLuhan in a Post Modern World: Is the Medium the Message?” hosted by the UW Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications. He will give his keynote address, “You Know Nothing of My Work!” in Riddell Hall at 7:30 p.m. The event is open to the public and admission is free. Visit www.tinyurl.com/UWMcLuhan for a full conference schedule.

Published in Volume 65, Number 7 of The Uniter (October 14, 2010)