Magic and Loss
The Internet as Art
-
-
1.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
Virginia Heffernan “melds the personal with the increasingly universal in a highly informative analysis of what the Internet is—and can be. A thoroughly engrossing examination of the Internet’s past, present, and future” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) from one of the best living writers of English prose.
This book makes a bold claim: The Internet is among mankind’s great masterpieces—a massive work of art. As an idea, it rivals monotheism. But its cultural potential and its societal impact often elude us. In this deep and thoughtful book, Virginia Heffernan reveals the logic and aesthetics behind the Internet, just as Susan Sontag did for photography and Marshall McLuhan did for television.
Life online, in the highly visual, social, portable, and global incarnation rewards certain virtues. The new medium favors speed, accuracy, wit, prolificacy, and versatility, and its form and functions are changing how we perceive, experience, and understand the world. In “sumptuous writing, saturated with observations that are simultaneously personal, cultural, and strikingly original” (The New Republic), Heffernan presents “a revealing look at how the Internet continues to reshape our lives emotionally, visually, and culturally” (The Smithsonian Magazine). “Magic and Loss is an illuminating guide to the Internet...it is impossible to come away from this book without sharing some of Heffernan’s awe for this brave new world” (The Wall Street Journal).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former New York Times television critic Heffernan writes about the Internet as one "massive and collaborative work of realist art." Marketed as a treatise on art, the book turns out to be more of a memoir infused with Heffernan's personal philosophy and religion. She divides the book into broad categories such as "Design," "Text," "Images," and "Video," but her discussion of those categories is mostly fragmented into quick takes on pop culture. She raves about the design of Hundreds, a puzzle game for smartphones, and is enraptured by YouTube videos and an image of smog in Beijing. She links the demise of the BlackBerry to the modern-day "sidelining" of the written word. When she describes her work for Slate, she says, "You could write about almost anything under the pretext of writing about television,"and she extends that principle to the Internet in this book. Heffernan riffs on pop star Beyonc , philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oculus Rift virtual reality, hashtags, and anything that marginally fits into the pretext of writing about "the Internet" or "art." Heffernan is articulate and she occasionally makes a lucid point about reading or how art and commerce intersect online, but those never combine into a cohesive book; instead, this is a random mishmash of unfocused ideas that ultimately offers little insight.
