Magic and Loss

Magic and Loss:  The Internet as Art, by Virginia Heffernan, Simon & Schuster 2016

"Tentatively, avidly, or kicking and screaming, nearly 2 billion of us have taken up residence on the Internet, and we're still adjusting to it," says author Virginia Heffernan."  To pull back from e-mail and tweets and see the internet through Heffernan's eyes as "the great masterpiece of human civilization," is less of a challenge when we see how she changes the concept from one of pure technology, to an art form that, as have all art forms, transformed entire countries.  

Not only has the internet since it's inception, accelerated business communications and data availability, it has transformed manners, privacy, global security, the speed at which "currency" changes hands, and soon if not now, artificial intelligence and robot colonies.  Specific devices like the Kindle, which Heffernan says changed reading, or the iPod that changed how and when we listen to music, or the iPhone, which wrapped more media together than any device previously could, it's clear that Heffernan favors the larger importance of what started simply as a Darpa single-use internet creation way back when. 

Heffernan's peculiar recitation of her personal life oddities - ,a Methodist-cum-Episcopalian mother, a Roman Catholic father who received special dispensation to take Communion at the Anglican church, an altar girl,  cocaine and other intoxication at college, etc etc.,  does not elevate the telling of her magnificent story, however.   Save it for your "my-friggin'-career book" that I hope will never be written.