The Printed Word

I enjoyed this long cover article in Harper's magazine (print), The Printed Word in Peril by Will Self. I did lots of underlining of choice paragraphs, shrewd insights, well-turned aphorisms, and several observations that he does a much better job of stating than I do. Much of what he says resonates to me as a reader, a librarian, and as a human mindful of, but not crazy about, the march of change.

I do believe his closing paragraphs to be sincere little surprises for him, as when he writes:

It was only when finishing this essay that I fully admitted to myself what I’d done: created yet another text that’s an analysis of our emerging ­BDDM life but that paradoxically requires the most sophisticated pre-BDDM reading skills to fully appreciate it. It’s the same feeling—albeit in diminuendo—as the one I had when I completed the trilogy of novels I’ve been working on for the past eight years, books that attempt to put down on paper what it feels like for human minds to become technologically transformed. I felt like one of those Daffy Ducks who runs full tilt over the edge of a precipice, then hovers for a few seconds in midair (while realization catches up with him), before plummeting to certain death. Look down and you may just see the hole I made when I hit the ground.

*"I referred above to “bidirectional digital media,” by which I mean 
the suite of technologies that comprises the wireless-connected 
computer, handheld or otherwise, the World Wide Web, and the internet. 
Henceforth I’ll abbreviate this term to BDDM."