"...with the 'extended mind' of the smart phone increasingly replacing our own memories, and the hive-mindedness of the web usurping our notions of the canonical..."

WILL SELF: IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT NOVELS

MODERNISM IS STILL THE BEST WAY TO REFLECT OUR WORLD BACK TO US

Nowadays, millions of people—at least notionally—are educated to graduate levels, and one would’ve expected this to inculcate them with a positive zest for challenging prose—but this doesn’t seem to be the case. When I get going in this vein, my 16-year-old son says: “Face it, Dad, you’re just an old man shaking your fist at the cloud.” Yet I don’t regard myself as opposed to the new media technologies in any way at all—nor do I view them as “bad,” let alone as cultural panopathogens. I’ve no doubt that human intelligence will continue to be pretty much the same as it has heretofore—but the particular form of intelligence associated with book-learning (and all that this entails) is undoubtedly on the wane, with the “extended mind” of the smart phone increasingly replacing our own memories, and the hive-mindedness of the web usurping our notions of the canonical. I shan’t belabor the point, but it’s worth thinking about the impact of the so-called tyranny of film on contemporary cinema: the length of shots have become shorter and shorter, while the editing technique of cross-cutting between them in order to compel viewers’ attention has become ubiquitous. Arguably, this is similar to the concentration in the literary realm on “page-turners” with characters that are “relatable”—both narrative mediums are looking for ways to make their consumers’ experience more facile.