HEFNNER: I'm Alexander
Heffner, your host on
The Open Mind.
Magic and Loss,
those words,
the title of our
guest's debut book,
encapsulate more
poignantly than any other
juxtaposition, the
internet's promise
and peril.
Among the founding mothers
of the digital revolution
who have joined me- Sue
Gardner of Wikipedia,
Mitchell Baker of Mozilla,
Louise Dubé of iCivics,
author Astra Taylor-
today we add a luminary
to their ranks.
Digital chronicler
Virginia Heffernan- a long
time critic for the
New York Times
and Times Magazine.
Today we discuss
her Magic and Loss.
The internet
as a seductive,
all powerful
and mighty art,
and how the digital realm
rewires our circuits.
Heffernan's intimate
voyage through the digital
world, its social
networks and innovators,
is intellectually
gratifying,
eliciting perplexing
questions: is
tweeting poetry?
Is Netflix consumption
a drug-inducing binge?
How do you upgrade
education for the
digital age?
And what about literacy?
What does it mean
to read too much?
And she said to that-
we're about to find out.
Ethically and
biologically.
Do explain, Virginia.
HEFFERNAN: How
we're going to find
out ethically
and biologically?
Well.
HEFFNER: And it's a
pleasure to have you here.
HEFFERNAN: Thank you.
Um.
I will start with are
we reading too much. Um.
And the- the book's
answer to that question
is a resounding "Yes."
I think we're
at a period of Hyperlexia.
We're accustomed to
saying that the culture
is coarsening and that
we're becoming less
and less literate.
In fact, this is the
first time in history
that we've been willing
to risk fatal car
accidents in order to
keep reading and writing.
Keep texting.
No one can keep
us away from it.
And yet, the old guard-
the producers of books
like that one- codex
books on paper- tell us
that we are illiterate.
Why is this true?
That we're not
reading enough?
Texting seems to be
invisible as reading
and writing.
As opposed to the reading
of books like that.
And that is,
in a nutshell,
a parable about the
digital revolution.
That certain art forms
that now take- now take
digital form- are almost
invisible to the canon
of art that preceded it.
HEFFNER: So we're just
ignoring the chaos and
we're not valuing it
in necessarily the
way we should.
HEFFERNAN: Well, I
saw an ...an article
that asked
the question, um, is
poetry dead in the age
of Twitter, and it occurred
to me that this was like
asking is music dead
in the age of guitars?
That Twitter is one of the
first ... is the first form
I know of since possibly
Confucianism to make
140 characters the um-
the ... the the trademark-
the um absolute paradigm
of self-expression. Um.
So. The great
epigrammatists like
like Emerson,
like Confucius, like
Pascal- would have
embraced this form.
And yet for some reason,
we read tweets as this
short form, uh- let's
see- let's say like-
it's something for
attention deficit
disorder,
troubled, shallow,
reading public. Um.
I sometimes work harder
on a tweet than I do
on a whole article for
the New York Times.
You want to get
it exactly right.
HEFFNER: Getting it
exactly right in the
digital age is a
challenge because we are
overpopulated in uh
muck, to some extent.
Right?
What gets attention is
uh- the contradiction,
the paradox, but even
more so- like you say
in the book, and
ugly comment.
So is it that we don't
want to value the
140 characters because
we see it so
frequently hijacked
in that way?
HEFFERNAN: I think
trolling is less of a
problem than
we think it is.
HEFFNER: Why?
HEFFERNAN: It- well- it's
a little like um- mugging
in the in the 70s.
Or the or the false
institution of wilding
later on that there's got
to be some crime going on
in a world so densely
populated as the internet.
And we- when I was first
uh part of uh the what
was then called the
Cyber Law Seminar at
the Harvard Law
School- the great fear was
that the internet would
make the distribution
of child pornography
easier. Um.
And we had- we had the
Assistant Attorney General
come and talk to us about
the internet- this
is the early 90s-
the internet and
child pornography
was the only thing that
anyone cared about.
Now sometimes the only
thing it seems we care
about with social media is
cyberbullying or trolling.
I think that that's
because you need a
paradigmatic crime in
order to express our
uneasiness and our
queasiness with
how packed the web feels.
How- I love that you used
the word muck because
I sometimes liken the
web- by which I mean
the commercial part of the
internet- the part with,
you know, a URL, WWW,
as opposed to the use
of apps which is
another, obviously,
digital experience.
I sometimes liken that web
that many of us came of-
came of age with to uh
New York in the 70s.
Or Chicago in the 70s.
When the- it was an
article of faith that
these were broken
cities, that they
were ungovernable.
That the design
was messed up.
That there were-
there was- malware-
the equivalent of
malware- or trolls,
let's say- you know,
cruising the streets.
And that may have
been true enough.
That there was- that
crime was- that there
was more crime, that
there was more racism.
But the other fact was
some people thought
the 70s was the
most exciting time
to be in New York.
Was the most Reformist.
Was the most interesting
musically and artistically
and and I think those of
us who still hang out
on the open web still
see it that way.
Still see it that way
and didn't flee entirely
for what I think of
as the suburbs,
namely, the app
store and, the and,
and and mobile devices
that basically decant the
like huge reservoir
of information that's
available on the web-
decant it in to those
perfect little apps that
sometimes when I look
at them on a phone- on
an Android or an iPhone-
look very like little
Levittown houses.
Little- perfect
little houses.
Couldn't be more
different from
Yahoo when it launched.
The junky, kind of
non-design of Yahoo-
which I really
identify with that
teeming city that,
yes has crime like
trolls and cyberbullying,
but also has all- is
fertile ground for the
production of a
whole new vocabulary.
HEFFNER: Well, it's
certainly true
that when I was in
elementary school and
introduced to Google,
there was some- there
was something magical
about the
simplicity of it.
Having gone from
Encyclopedia Britannica
to Google and now seeing
this next generation-
I'm an old millennial,
if I can be called that.
Embracing the multiplicity
of uh engagements-
whether it's social
media or other ways to
get their information.
But I want you to- to
focus in on Magic
and Loss and the
context of equity.
Because I think
what you wrote
about Levittown
and the App Store-
and also the
sleekness of the web-
speaks to this question
of a digital divide
and how salient that is
in in in configuring
our perception of the web.
HEFFERNAN: You mean
the fact that the-
that the mobile web- and
let's- let's just say,
call it, Apple's
internet-
HEFFNER: ...Yeah.
HEFFERNAN: Is more
expensive,
it's better designed,
it appeals to our
highest aesthetic. Um-
HEFFNER: And
lost- literally,
when I hear loss I
hear lack of access.
I think there's a lost
generation without
the accessibility to
the new forms of media
to which you allude
in the book.
HEFFERNAN: That's
right. Well.
Early on when I was
writing about the web
and when I- when I really
before I had sort of put
my finger on the loss
and the grieving I think
that we all feel in the
digital revolution-
when I was really
living on the web
and thinking,
like so many of us,
this is so exciting,
this is so
interesting, um,
what is this- you know- it
was like being in a whole
new um civilization
that, you know,
had somehow
sprung up overnight.
So while I was there
and so excited about it,
one of the things that
interested me was how
populations that- had-
that had had seemingly
been invisible in the,
in the popular media,
in in, in paper newspapers
um and glossy magazines,
suddenly were showing
up in huge numbers.
So one of the first big
boards- so these are
the message board, the
heyday of message boards
that I couldn't stay away
from was something called
Prison Talk, which is um,
a site for the loved ones
of um incarcerated people.
And um this dramatized
in a thousand ways-
or I should say almost
a million ways because
this got so many posts
it was an extraordinary-
Dickensian would be too
small a word to describe
how elaborate this was.
It was, you know, a sense
of um- uh- how extensive
this "sea to shining
sea" penal colony that,
you know, that the
U.S. has become- is.
And that incarceration-
that- um- the ideology
around that and, and- I
will say the poetry around
it because there was a lot
of poetry um smuggled out
um by people visiting
and then posted online
by prisoners that,
you know, there's a
long tradition-
literary tradition of
writing by prisoners.
Including from Socrates
and the Jack Henry Abbott.
This partook of that.
And you could have put
your finger on the um
emotional, sensory, and
then also the ideology
around incarceration -
reading that big board
in 1992- which was started
by a federal prisoner-
better than I would
argue- some of the
reported books
that were exposés of this
system after the fact.
And I could not believe
that there was a map
online- a symbolic
map of this world
and what it was
producing, you
know, in '91.
HEFFNER: It was- it's
almost like Orange
is the New Black two
decades earlier, right?
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
It was amazing.
And I do think
some of the fiction,
like Orange is the New
Black and and maybe Oz
before that- but Orange is
the New Black really gets
to it because
it's uh, it's,
you know, it's a
literary work,
manages to dramatize um-
that experience as well
as Prison Talk did.
Um. To my mind.
HEFFNER: And that's an
example of the opposite
effect in the sense of
empowerment- the internet
not only as art but
artistic empowerment.
How important are these
questions in dictating
the future of society,
given the fact that
the internet- and streaming
in particular- dominates
what we do today.
And I'd like you to
reflect on the
binge questions-
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Because I think
that watching a series
from start to finish where
you had to anticipate-
The West Wing, for,
for instance.
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
HEFFNER: You had
to anticipate
and remember what happened-
HEFFERNAN: Ah. Yeah.
HEFFNER: What transpired.
And I think that the
cult-like following of
some of these shows- it's
like- the loss aspect of
it is the loss of memory.
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
HEFFNER: The loss of- it's
not just attention span,
it's actually- you're
more- it's like a drug.
You say it very well
in the book, right?
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
HEFFNER: So what,
what does it mean
and is that drug-like
phenomenon a problem?
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
Well, I um- you know- the
other problem of the 70s
inner city was drugs
and once again
we're worried about drugs.
I um- I think what I
did there was pick up
on Netflix's embrace
of the word binge um
and um some of the
other- uh- you have
some of the other
producers of streaming
television deciding
that a binge was a
good thing um, and
trying to sort of play
around with whether that
um- where the connection
to health came in
that. Um. I um.
I don't mean to not
acknowledge any loss,
but it is important to
think about how- well
first of all- how
literate the shows are-
everyone has said
that. Um.
I just had a- you
know- finally had my
Downton Abbey binge and
there's something in the,
um- well, there's
something in the
redundancy of that
show that uh uh really
appeals to me.
The like, constant um-
peril and um tragedy
that the characters
are subjected to
and then always the
stoic resilience of
the British. Um.
That it has to happen
over and over again
for you to sort of see it.
But in any case, I
probably wouldn't have
been able to make those
connections had I watched
it episodically or
week by week and um-
there's a long
tradition in the arts-
because you're bringing
up the language of
health and I um I-
and this is maybe my bias.
I wrote forever
about television.
Television was the only
art at the New York Times-
and it was in the
Arts Section- that was
considered at once an
art on par with dance,
and and film, um, and
architecture- worthy of
critical study- on
the other hand, a
public health hazard.
A neurotoxin.
Something that was
killing our children.
So walking the knife's
edge between is this
an art or is this bad
for us has always
been something
I've embraced.
I think the sign- the-
putting something
under the sign of 'bad for
your health' - is always
a great goad to
creativity in the field.
So. The beginning
of the novel,
I write about this- that
it was- um- that it was
um-you know,
that it would,
um, was- that it- it
could poison the
minds of young
women- novels and
point the way to female
depravity- novels were
said to be like that.
Now novels are the
highest sign of literacy.
Binging is something
Flaubert talked about.
He said you should lose
yourself in literature
as in a perpetual orgy.
What is another word
for binge but orgy?
This is an interaction
with art and an
interaction with
art with plenty
of precedent-
your parents don't-
if your parents
don't like you
doing it, and don't
think you're doing it,
it probably falls
in that category.
HEFFNER: Well,
it's a question of,
I think it goes
back to the beginning,
is it rewiring us in a
way that's antithetical
or inimical to our
long term health.
Um. But you say here like
all new technologies,
the Internet appears to
represent the world
more faithfully than the
technologies that preceded
it and the Internet is an
extraordinarily seductive
representation
of the world.
HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Well.
Um. Part of the evidence
of how seductive it is,
is that we tend to talk
about it as a- as closer
to a science or a
business- in other words,
as reality- instead of
talking about it like we
might talk about a Harry
Potter novel or a set of
novels- where people
are playing a game-
a massively multiplayer
online role playing game.
There's nothing in my
avatar on Twitter
or yours- they don't
even bear our own names-
I think think
you're heff... heffnera.
I'm page88.
And um, and they are
characters that we invent.
Do you think that I say
the things on Twitter
that I would say to
you in person?
No. I say very specific
things because
I'm creating a character.
HEFFNER: Depends on
whether you're on
television or not,
right? [LAUGHS]
HEFFERNAN:
[LAUGHS] Yeah.
That's right.
But we we we- are
accustomed to how we
create characters when
we appear on television
or even in social space.
But for some reason
we constantly make the
mistake that we are
actually showing
up in digital
space. Um. A.
HEFFNER: Why-
how- why are we not?
We are showing up.
HEFFERNAN: Well.
We're showing up, but
not quite as ourselves.
So. You know.
One thing I like- I'm
not very good at creating
characters on the page-
I can't write fiction-
but I do like to talk to
fiction writers about
how they actually
write a character like
Philip Roth did-
a character called
Philip Roth that does
all these things.
I'm sure that
you, off camera,
out of makeup, are
a different man
than you are right
now as Alexander
Heffner. Um. And.
HEFFNER: Survey says,
after the interview.
HEFFERNAN: And I
...I ...I would- like-
HEFFNER: But that's-
that- that is the origin
of the harassment problem
that people- if you
want to believe in our
better angels showing
up in real life.
HEFFERNAN: That's right.
That's right.
We'll here's-
so, I, yes.
Real life.
This is a wonderful,
perfect distinction
to make.
In real life- sorry,
I want to go back
to one other thing.
When I first started
playing the internet
in the 1970s as a child.
Um. I happened to
get in to network
computing.
The danger in those days
was that we would all get
in to Dungeons
and Dragons and
start believing it
was reality.
The- like- fear was
that we would lose
ourselves in it.
We have lost
ourselves in the internet.
Remember the line between
what happens on the
internet and what
happens in real life?
For instance.
The- I had a day where
Reddit- the um- site that
sometimes inspires
trolls- led with me,
meaning they had a story-
it was the very first
story about me.
On- in some ways,
worst day of my life.
Because on Twitter,
everywhere else,
people were just
like you're an idiot,
you know, you're
ugly, you're bad.
Um. In fact, I was
in Florida.
And once I shut down-
once I decided
that in that
strange realm that
is the internet,
this is gonna be a bad
day- closed my computer,
put down my phone, had
one of the greatest days.
Because me- page88- was
taking sniper fire for me.
pagee88 was getting dumped
on by people- by "people"-
by symbolic
representations of people
who'd never met her.
And I was hanging
out with my cousins.
So once that day
ended and I heard
from lots of real
life friends- oh that must
have been such a bruising
day for you- incidentally,
it's not like I didn't
go read everything that
was written about me
and suffer a little pain
over it- but bifurcating
myself- realizing I am
not my Wikipedia page,
I am not my Twitter feed-
and this is something-
HEFFNER: You can
forget but the
internet never forgets.
And it's something Jeffrey
Rosen has discussed
at this table in the
context of the law
because unlike in Europe
where you can forget-
because the laws allow
for pages to be deleted-
or at least some laws-
HEFFERNAN: Yep.
HEFFNER: Here, no. So I
don't know if this line
of demarcation is exactly
the state in which people
think about the
internet because
they think they're mic'd
up and ready to go.
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
This is actually a
conversation I've had
with Rebecca Goldstein-
the writer who wrote uh-
Plato at the Googleplex.
That it depends on- if
you think reality lives
in history- so you
think that the most
important fact
of your uh- your um-
your existence online
is that it doesn't-
that it doesn't die-
that it's seemingly
immortal- we don't
know what's going to
happen to the cloud and
the databases in Austin.
But let's say you last
forever on the internet.
Every bad thing said about
you is on the internet.
Does that make it somehow
more real than our flesh
and blood selves?
Right?
Just because it lasts
forever- just because it
lasts a long time- just-
even because- even if you
imagine the worst thing
in the world that our
descendants and
our, you know,
all the people that we
egotistically imagine
are going to
think about us-
HEFFNER: I'm not- yeah-
I'm not talking about
after the- the grave.
You know?
I'm not talking about
the afterlife per se,
I'm talking about
the fact that-
HEFFERNAN: It will
dog you.
HEFFNER: It's it's
like that quote
from Up in the Air. Right?
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
What is it?
HEFFNER: It's "What we
modern women do in this
age, to Google a man.
When we've got a crush."
HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Right.
HEFFNER: So it's-
it's a living
embodiment, too.
I mean it's living
as an analog to you.
HEFFERNAN: It's absolutely
living as an analog,
and you have a reputation
there and you have
all these things to do.
All I would say
is, it's not you.
Something I say to
parents- and parents
are very concerned
about their kids on
the internet-
is work with them
as artists or,
you know, if you like
character creators,
to create a durable
and interesting online
identity and make
sure you know that
it is not you.
HEFFNER: So there
are two more things
I want to highlight.
One is at the- at the
conclusion of the book,
I think again in drawing
this dichotomy
and then realizing well
you can reconcile
the Magic and
Loss, you cite
William James,
one of my
favorite philosophers or
sociologists, whatever
you want to call him.
Varieties of
Religious
Experience, as well.
Talk about analog- that's
an analog to the way
we view the internet
because you just have
more experiences than
one can count- and
and I thought that you
might- expound on that,
while informing your
answer to this question.
HEFFERNAN: OK.
HEFFNER: The A.P.
Stylebook
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Just decided
that the Internet
should go from capital
I to lowercase.
Lower initial.
Internet was capitalized,
and now it's lowercased.
HEFFERNAN: Yeah.
I think it's
capped in the book.
HEFFNER: So. I. Right.
So. All caps, right?
HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Yeah.
[LAUGHS]
HEFFNER: But I-
I think that-
I think about it in
that context of
Williams James,
because- because of God.
Lowercase,
uppercase, what say
you about internet
and the AP
Stylebook's decision.
HEFFERNAN: This is
a great question.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Well, first of all,
this is the first
I'm hearing about it.
So thank you.
As usual you're
informative and bring
as much to the
interview as anyone.
Um. I um. Off the
cuff will say that I
have been interested
in this with the
word "Cloud." Um.
"The Cloud"
was invented in,
um, in an exurb I
think of- of Dallas.
Or possibly Houston.
Sorry- the- yes.
Houston.
The uh- with the
Compaq- a set of
Compaq executives.
These executives were,
independently of their
work, extremely religious.
Um. You know, unlike the
Buddhist Steve Jobs
or the sort of
Progressives- Jewish
Progressives at,
at Google-
these guys were,
um, these guys
were, you know,
on the boards of what
would become megachurches.
They invented "The Cloud"-
a place where information
could survive bodily
death- as the- you know-
if your computer died,
it could live forever
in "The Cloud." I mean
that is an analog
for heaven if I've
ever heard it- and it
was always capped.
The same way that you
rightly suggest
that the capitalization
of internet suggests
that there's something
worthy of um a certain
kind of deference and awe.
And um. I personally-
although I could be
talked out of it-
would argue that I'd
like to keep it that way.
Um. But- web, by
the way, has gone
up and down too
for some people.
Um. Uh.
HEFFNER: Why would
you keep it that way?
HEFFERNAN: Why would
I keep it that way?
Because I think that we
um complain about the uh-
complain about the
smallest details of our
experience online- one
time that you didn't get
a "like" on
something or you know,
a lot of social media
problems that basically
are just our
problems with other
people generally.
People have the same
complaints about traffic-
traffic, or
being in a crowd.
But we lack the proper
awe for this thing
that we have all
created- that we are
all collectively
working to invent.
With every
Instagram picture.
This is just photography.
Our- you know- our
kids are involved in
photography and
self-portraiture-
it has a long history.
Obviously it hasn't
realized itself yet in,
in truly beautiful
Instagram photography,
although some
people think it has.
But. You know,
we're at the like,
Birth of a Nation
stage in film with
Instagram photography.
You know?
What can we
expect from this,
except for, you know,
people playing around
with semi pornography,
which is- you know,
film started with
a lot of that too.
Um. The novel started
with a lot of that, too.
And you know, all kinds of
other ways that we explore
ourselves in the
form of photography.
That's just
one part of it.
But we need to give
ourselves a little credit.
I mean, you know,
even like- even my,
you know, my father
has a HuffPo blog!
My, you know, my
brother has a website.
People who describe
themselves even as
luddites have, you know,
met some of their best
friends on a message board
or- or- have a- you know,
right now my favorite
social network is Venmo.
Every time you
even use Venmo,
the online payment
system, to pay someone,
you make a contribution,
because through social
media, it shows up when
someone pays someone else-
to this like, strange
world of commerce.
Those are all
contributions that
we need to give
ourselves credit for.
We're not doing nothing.
We're not
wasting our time.
And we are certainly not
poisoning our brains
when we uh- when we
look on Facebook.
HEFFNER: Finally.
Last question.
What would William
James say of the Internet?
HEFFERNAN: [SIGHS] I.
You know, I'd hope he'd
see it as an occasion
for um, for- you
know- for a certain
amount of faith.
Um. The um. One of the
contexts that I speak
about him in is is-
is immortality because he
gave a really interesting
lecture on immortality
that was- the thread
of the needle- it
wasn't totally um,
New Age before its time.
Um. But, you know,
people like Ray
Kurzweil that were OG
internet figures are
working very hard now
at Google to try to um
try to uh- try to
treat mortality
as a bug in the
human, you know,
human hardware.
Or a problem in our
hardware that mortality-
meaning they are trying
to game human biology
to create an immortal body.
This is on a natural
continuum with thinking
about the internet.
Because there's
something- as you say-
that lasts so
long about it.
I think James would have
seen in it an analog
for um- for a very um-
interesting model
of self-transcendence.
I also think he would have
um I also think he would
have been very
cautious to not
consider it- reality-
but to consider it a
symbolic order with its
own beauty and
its own problems.
HEFFNER: Virginia.
Thank you.
HEFFERNAN: Thank you.
HEFFNER: And thanks to
you in the audience.
I hope you join us
again next time
for a thoughtful
excursion in to the
world of ideas.
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keep an open mind.
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