Robert Koehler: Magical Thinking
Posted in: Today's ChiliMy laptop started making funny noises a few days ago and I knew that wasn’t good. I’m embarrassed to say that my first instinct was to hope they’d just go away.
I also had a quick, guilty thought about an essay by Umberto Eco I read some years back, comparing science and technology. Whereas the former involves a painstaking commitment to gather knowledge and understanding over the long haul, the latter hides the process of its becoming, simply giving the user a raw upgrade of power – instant, godlike. Wow, look what I can do! Technology encourages magical thinking, Eco wrote. And no piece of modern, reasonably priced technology spews magical thinking into the social arena more seductively than the computer.
OMG! Seduction, indeed! We – I – have gotten so used to such dazzling possibility: all human knowledge at my fingertips, plus . . . cool games, great oldies, satellite photos of every square inch of the planet, ten thousand sources of news, video footage of dead celebrities, infinite trivia and the search engines to serve it up to me. Every time my creative process stalls, I can wander into the distraction of my choosing and stay there for as long as I like. As a modern man, this is my entitlement. And this is what the writing process has become for me.
Post a Comment