Margaret Atwood on Laurie Anderson's 'Big Science': What was that thing?

A great read in the Guardian - Canadian novelist remembers what Laurie Anderson's debut album was and what it had meant when it first came out. It's being reissued on vinyl this week. "As the 20th century has morphed into the 21st, as the consequences of the destruction of the natural world have become devastatingly clear, as analogue has been superseded by digital, as the possibilities for surveillance have increased a hundredfold, and as the ruthless hive mind of the Borg has been approximated through online media, Anderson’s anxious and unsettling probings have taken on an aura of the prophetic. Do you want to be a human being any more? Are you one now? What even is that? Or should you just allow yourself to be held in the long electronic petrochemical arms of your false mother?".