Has the Digital Revolution Led to Cultural Devolution?

The major question we might ask at a conference on the Digital Migration is: has the digital revolution improved the quality of our cultural output? But my guess is we won’t touch this question. We are such techno-utopians that the very idea that the cornucopia of digital choice is not advancing the culture is slanderous. But I believe we are in a cultural crisis and part of it is the fault of the digital revolution. Now, I am not a Luddite. I love my iPad just as much as the next person and I believe that technological innovation is the key to America’s future. But I also started my working life in 1969, working for Bob Dylan and The Band. I know what good art looks and sounds like. I was sitting with the art critic Dave Hickey on the terrace of the Bellagio Hotel, having a fine Italian lunch, al fresco. The fountains exploded at regular intervals as I asked Hickey if perhaps our cultural crisis is not anchored in some notion of the “postmodern.” “Postmodernism is bullshit” he howls. “What does 9/11 tell you? That the war between the medieval and the modern is not over.” Well, I had no witty comeback to that and also felt, as a recent transplant to the academy, as much confusion about the rhetoric of the Postmodern philosophers as the linguist Noam Chomsky, who noted: