Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismGooglishusWe are on the cusp of a mutation. Google wants to organize the world's information. All of it. In the fullness of time, Google Print will put the content of all books at your browser's disposal. This from their website: "you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the title's bibliographic data and brief snippets." [1] Consider the cultural implications of this information apocalypse. History flattens to a single, sprawling, searchable text. [2] Digitized, Romanticism becomes common property. Search for your book in Google Print. See? No one needs to read anymore, not whole books anyway, only snippets. [3] Romanticism becomes material for mixology. Notes1. http://print.google.com/intl/en/googleprint/about.html 2. Post-modernism begins to look quaint in comparison. See Frederick Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke UP, 1992). 3. Jonathan Lethem explores what's forgotten by digital memory technologies in Gun, With Occasional Music (New York: Tor, 1996). Navigation |