A Black Hole recently appeared on my flip phone.
I bought a new one for $12 but have yet to program, limping along with unread texts (or who knows, maybe sexts). The major advantage of a flip phone is when you lose it — happens often– it’s only $12. Time for a Smart Phone already.
But we hardly need yet another DTA (digitally transmitted addiction), already having fallen in Apres TJ le Deluge. Roger Cohen says addicts check their phones 221 times daily.
Before starting this magazine, I might have been on the barricade with Roger Cohen sympathizing with his near eulogy — half self-deprecation, half self-congratulation — on the death of the reader. And from what better barricade than the print pages of the New York Times’ Opinion-Editorial Columns.
In his doleful lament on the digital transmission of language, Cohen brings up the poor calligrapher displaced by Gutenberg. Why not go all the way back to the 7th Letter where Plato accuses written language of doing injury to memory and meaning?
Born in 1955 before the newly-termed Bridge Generation, Cohen’s uneasy journey over the Bridge seems one of “passing,” of a ventriloquizing self. More of loss than gain.
Finally, Roger’s fear — all eyes on their smartphone — is that there can be “no community at all with downward gazes.”
But in our short time, we have found plenty of communities Of The Town: at Writers and Books at Lux at ButaPub at the Bibliophile Society at the People’s Party Just to name a few.
And ones not sundered but tethered together by digital technology (where we have tried to play a small part).
And if you are reading this, there must still be readers.
Speaking of which — without sounding like a WXXI pitch — this magazine, this community, will not survive without your literary and visual contributions. A community needs readers and writers.
Guys, dolls and apples at the Writers and Books Scavenger Hunt for Rochester Reads
What Millennials think of the Bridge Generation at Lux Lounge.
Bringing wisdom and beer to the masses with Jake Kwiatkowski
Rejoice, Book Lovers. The Bibliophile Society of Rochester revitalized!
On the People’s Party with DJ Alykhan. And raising $500 for Chess, Rhymes and Wisdom
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” And how much of this will you read?