[contextly_auto_sidebar id="L8uqg7ERM237iPSVXdaL6TdXt2SjQlsL"] AFTER a while, I get tired of all the jive around certain terms. "Disruption" is one; "empowerment," another. ("Innovate" seems to be headed for corporate sponsorship.) The latest infuriating one is the way the word "subversive" has been turned into a marketing strategy and a straight-faced description of Lady Gaga and Jeff Koons. … [Read more...]
Bettye LaVette on the Holidays
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="J8WVzCkdtyD5fR74qCUxJ2DbI1pZxyrk"] I CAUGHT the soul singer in a playful mood the other day when I called to talk to her about a tradition she took seriously. LaVette chose to talk about her zealotry for celebrating Christmas and other holidays. She went off on a number of tangents, and covered the whole emotional range we associate with the blues. Here's part of … [Read more...]
Are We Really in a Gutenberg Moment?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="n4bv9MRmUDoFtO6zdRvCDUwfVj0rxy5C"] OFTEN these days, we hear that the shift from the analog world of print to the online and digital world resembles what happened when Gutenberg's printing press reshaped Renaissance Europe, crushing Catholicism, spreading literacy and perhaps democracy, and overturning old ways. People who frame our current transition this way often … [Read more...]
Have We Lost the Ability to Be Alone?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wInG9qIiyZXfe5IWkw9gGzmkXV2eQ06T"] A COUPLE of decades into it, we're still figuring out what the Internet is doing to us, as individuals and as a society. A fascinating interview with the author of a new book, The End of Absence, get at this in a nuanced way. Author Michael Harris talks about the difference between the digital era and the age of Gutenberg, the … [Read more...]
Switching Sides in the Digital War
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="eJnmz4EFyiZtMYvvDKNPqiDekKwUDUR1"] DIDN'T we hear about how great it was going to be? Those early days, when we were told how funky and non-commercial and liberating the Web was going to be, now seem like ancient history. One writer who believed in the promise of the Internet in the early days has come to see what a much more complex issue the digital revolution … [Read more...]
What Killed Adulthood? Pop Culture or Capitalism?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jery8F5jteMew95L1w4tWKmHZdFvaBDv"] ONE of the smarter back and forths over the last week or so has been the response to A.O. Scott's essay "The Post-Man," on how genuine adulthood has seeped out of American culture. He's taken the usual hits for being a nostalgic, entitled, puritanical white man -- charges I'm sure he could see coming a mile away -- most of which … [Read more...]
Will the Internet Ever Get Less Nasty?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="sX5mpeff0G48ZdDK8B8DiylO4zB4YCnG"] BY now, anyone who writes for a living knows the kind of nasty comments and chatter that accompanies almost any public utterance. (This seems like a cross between the hostility that's bred on places like Fox News and the larger "snark" culture, with an extra layer of nastiness unique to the Internet.) How did it happen, what are the … [Read more...]