February 2, 2012

The chief result of the digital revolution

“The chief result of the digital revolution, then, has been to downgrade all art and personal expression to the level of the ephemeral, quickly-consumed and discarded content. In terms of writing this means genre filler: romance (or its seedier cousin porn), suspense thrillers, and supernatural twaddle. What we’re talking about here is the kind of stuff people purchase by the bale, but that nobody wants to have on their bookshelf at home. Not, I might add, out of shame but simply because they don’t think such books are worth keeping.” — Alex Good, “The Digital Apocalypse”, Canadian Notes & Queries 83