These live events—all have at their base the fact that someone has created, most likely written, an artifact to be shared. A lecture, a play, a music performance, all presume an audience and invite responses. The impulse to move away from the isolation and solipsism of the recent virtual digital life looks to me like it will veer toward the literal Platonic ideal— the Socratic conversions presented in the dialogues of Plato. True culture and intellection has always been a limited affair, even in the fading Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The more popular entertainments of Aristophanes and the other playwrights reflected those higher conversations. Reading circles, poetry readings, music performances, and lectures need to be kept alive in order to have anything to build on in the after times. After the destructive wave of AI as the final digital solvent of all things human and humane recedes people will need access to the record and tradition of real thought and culture. Just like the recovery of Plato and Aristotle in the middles ages, after the last dark age catastrophe
This reminds me of James Marriott's analysis on the decline and even slow death of reading. I think it's gotten even worse than you point out in this lovely article, Matthew. Recently, I went to the cinema to get lost in a film, Nuremberg. The film was pretty poor, but what animated me more than anything else was a man checking his phone every 10-15 minutes. At one point, the AI even got going as it asked him what he wanted to search for. It was sooo distracting and took me out of my experience, where I just wanted to fall into the film.
Perhaps even worse was when I went to see Hans Zimmer's Next Level in Leeds. It was such a treat for me to see the great man live and get to experience his transformative music. Instead, everyone around me just had their phones out filming the experience. It could have spoiled my evening if the music and show overall hadn't been so breathtaking. It strikes me that we are not even able to get lost in experiences, but need to try and 're-live' them. It feels that we are increasingly unable to just live our lives.
As an author who does readings, I found this analysis quite true.
These live events—all have at their base the fact that someone has created, most likely written, an artifact to be shared. A lecture, a play, a music performance, all presume an audience and invite responses. The impulse to move away from the isolation and solipsism of the recent virtual digital life looks to me like it will veer toward the literal Platonic ideal— the Socratic conversions presented in the dialogues of Plato. True culture and intellection has always been a limited affair, even in the fading Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The more popular entertainments of Aristophanes and the other playwrights reflected those higher conversations. Reading circles, poetry readings, music performances, and lectures need to be kept alive in order to have anything to build on in the after times. After the destructive wave of AI as the final digital solvent of all things human and humane recedes people will need access to the record and tradition of real thought and culture. Just like the recovery of Plato and Aristotle in the middles ages, after the last dark age catastrophe
This reminds me of James Marriott's analysis on the decline and even slow death of reading. I think it's gotten even worse than you point out in this lovely article, Matthew. Recently, I went to the cinema to get lost in a film, Nuremberg. The film was pretty poor, but what animated me more than anything else was a man checking his phone every 10-15 minutes. At one point, the AI even got going as it asked him what he wanted to search for. It was sooo distracting and took me out of my experience, where I just wanted to fall into the film.
Perhaps even worse was when I went to see Hans Zimmer's Next Level in Leeds. It was such a treat for me to see the great man live and get to experience his transformative music. Instead, everyone around me just had their phones out filming the experience. It could have spoiled my evening if the music and show overall hadn't been so breathtaking. It strikes me that we are not even able to get lost in experiences, but need to try and 're-live' them. It feels that we are increasingly unable to just live our lives.
I think I wrote my last paper letter to a friend in 2010. Someone please shoot me now.
Love this.
I love this and love Clarissa. I'd love to see more reading events, selfishly, in Chicago.
I lament this, even if it's descriptive as a reaction against the direction that the development of social media and mobile computing took in society.