Imagine Literature without Technology

Literature’s power rests on imagination.  With all the new technological advances, literary writers have to step it up a notch.  Bemoaning the iPhone is hardly effective:

Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage. (It’s Odysseus, can someone look up the way to Ithaca? Use the “no Sirens” route.)

Socrates bemoaned a technological advancement (which we now call writing…His student Plato thought writing quite brilliant, which is a good thing considering we wouldn’t know who either Socrates or Plato was if they weren’t written about). The Church was certain the printing press would be the ruin of biblical interpretation.  We know what critics have said about TV.

Technology is part of humanity.  What’s more, little techy devices are the products of imagination.  And it is imagination that is at the root of the quote above.  Authors need their readers to be imaginative.  And they are right to expect imagination of their readers.  But, though technology is the product of imagination and authors need it, I fear imagination is what is most likely to be lost in our technological times.

I’ve just finished reading Grown Up Digital.  In it, the author glosses over the loss of literature and imagination.  He focuses on tangible and pragmatic ends to justify the value of Internet culture and social action: students who sift through information and organize protests against corporations.  OK.  But, let’s not abandon a thoughtful discussion of imagination.

My concern, as I have voiced elsewhere, is that imagination will be devalued to make room for rampant pragmatism.  I believe deeply that there should be meaningful ends to things–I’ve also decried the abstract ridiculousness of academic writing, for example–but imagination still merits cultivation and exploration.  A world without literature–can you imagine?

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