Unflattening

Sousanis begins with the image of the human in an assembly line. The masculinized human figure, who is slumped over and has poorly defined facial features, is a typical assembly-line product and undergoes a process of standardization as he develops. The result is what Sousanis calls “flatness”: a function of “one-dimensional thought and behavior” whose presence in our education systems makes it seem inherent to reality (Location 19). Using boxes to frame his text, Sousanis comments that “not only space, but time and experience too, have been put in boxes” (Location 23). We then internalize this mode of perception to compare ourselves against the perfect, standardized human.

Sousanis features Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man of 1490, which “attempted to define the universe” through human proportions, as a counterpoint to the present-day human, who is “boxed into bubbles of its own making” (Location 27).

He concludes with an illustration of spinning tops—toys babies play with—imagining a time at the beginning of a human life when “the potential energy in this dynamic creature” is at its apex (Location 27). This potential energy never gets set in motion, as the human is instead relegated to a future of