- The Digital Writer  
 
 

The Digital Writer  

 

I was reading a good book, one that I've had around for a long time and has gained a bit of fame and credibility over the years. As I read through it I thought, "will this piece of writing survive the clattering teeth of time?" It could be that sometime in the future men and women will no longer pay this piece of writing any mind at all. It will be codified in a huge database very few people tap into. And yet, the life of this piece of writing has been with us for over one hundred years. Without it, the level of culture and civilization would be difficult to imagine. Therefore, one can say that whatever occurs in the future, if they are a civilized lot, they will need to produce work at this level or above. If they don't then they will be, merely, barbarians who will survive through time by force and terror.

Writing shows the way out of the problem of living in a world with too much confusion, too much change, too much of everything. Writing discriminates and slows down and makes the mind deliberate and so shows the way to a civilized, cultured existence. And it is only those cultures high in civilized value that values writing and other arts. The barbaric periods in history despise them. And they destroy everything for a dubious dance in the eternal now. And it could just as well happen tomorrow as yesterday.

A new medium, like the internet, is a liberator or acts as a catalyst to new forms, new stimulations. And that means that the element of fascination re-enters culture. We are ignorant in front of what can be known, therefore we need to be inspired to know beyond what we ever thought possible. New forms of communication then and new ways to keep the mind folding back against the impossible that seems to press inward all the time.

The greatest modern literary theme is the wonderful birth of great, heroic machines and emaciated, backward, barbaric human beings playing out in their shadows. We will be the people and the culture the future must overcome. I hope not but it is a theme.

David


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