On the End of Print: Roll Over Gutenberg
(And Tell Zuckerberg the News)
How odd these scribbly, glyphic ink-trails are! And how odder still these mossy, insular contrarians who continue to traffic in them: the glassy-eyed de-coders, in tea-stained lap robes wrapped, and the even less numerous wild-eyed en-coders, on tea-stained laptops rapping. You readers, you writers: ain’t you heard? The page is a thing of the past; the newsboys sleep with the fishes, in the bony arms of heartbroke librarians, and few are they who mourn, for they are the nearly done, son -- and who would want to hang with losers like them? Oh, and btw, BRB…Had to go update my status.
What I mean is -- Dudes! -- how is it possible that anybody is still editing and publishing a small literary magazine -- on paper! Can’t they just upload their data to the cloud, whither the preponderance of our cultural capital hath lately fled, there to reside in everlasting, ever searchable splendor? Like, I mean, as a .pdf or whatever? What is the attraction to the analog domain of ink and press, to say nothing of envelope and stamp? Hey, Mr. Postman, re-tweet this…! No wonder those guys are all the time freaking out and shooting their co-workers: who would willingly chain themselves to such an outmoded modality -- and stand there in those lame blue shirts and ask strangers if there’s any blood in the package?
Here’s the news, brethren: ain’t nobody looking, or listening either. Their eyes are not on God, but on pixels, and the refresh rate is off the charts. Yet there is blood in the package: the unwatched page is free as never before to bleed, and to piss and moan and howl like a devil dog in the deserted streets of what used to be the City of Thought. Pull up a chair -- millions are empty -- and read, Cave People, read!
-Charles Duncan
