Real Computers Scared Me; If You Can

The Music Industry Is An Interesting Lens Through Which To Look At Change, Because It Has Had Such A Difficult Time Adjusting To The Digital Age.

But It Was Another Girl, Young And New To The City, Fiddling With Her Keys.

Rebecca Was An Academic Star. Her New Book Was On The Phenomenon Of Word Casings, A Term She'd Invented For Words That No Longer Had Meaning Outside Quotation Marks. English Was Full Of These Empty Words--"friend" And "real" And "story" And "change"--words That Had Been Shucked Of Their Meanings And Reduced To Husks. Some, Like "identity" And "search" And "cloud," Had Clearly Been Drained Of Life By Their Web Usage. With Others, The Reasons Were More Complex; How Had "american" Become An Ironic Term? How Had "democracy" Come To Be Used In An Arch, Mocking Way?

I Wonder What Proust Would Have Made Of Our Present-day Locus Of Collective Fantasy, The Internet. I’m Guessing He Would Have Seized On Its Wistful Aspect, Pointing Out Gently And With Wry Humor That Much Of What Beguiles Us Is The Act Of Reaching For What Isn’t There.

Be Willing And Unafraid To Write Badly, Because Often The Bad Stuff...forms A Base On Which To Build Something Better.