From Jonathan Franzen Freedom, 2010: Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
Because it's the same problem everywhere. It's like the internet, or cable TV — there's never any center, there's no communal agreement, there's just a trillion little bits of distracting noise. We can never sit down and have any kind of sustained conversation, it's all just cheap trash and shitty development. All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things are dying off.
If it’s any consolation, T.S. Eliot said something similar in “Choruses from the Rock“ (1934)…
“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
This brings to mind a phrase I like — “dangling conversations” — but I can’t remember whether it’s from an Eliot poem studied long ago or from some song.
This has nothing to do with the topic of your post but I figure it's an appropriate place to tell you this.
I just discovered your new site http://paper.li/davidakin thanks to a fellow commenter at another blog. It has been added to my bookmarks list of news aggregators.
Congratulations on your versatility and good work. As I've pointed out at other times, I may not always agree with your take on certain issues, but you are still one of the few journalists whose work I generally trust.