Things Worth Remembering: How to Save All the Lonely People
“And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money,” predicted Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace. (Basso Cannarsa/Opale via Alamy)
In 1996, David Foster Wallace tried to explain how technology could destroy us. No one paid attention. But he was right.
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5 mins
Produced by ElevenLabs using AI narration
273
Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers reflect on a piece or conversation from history that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Ted Gioia reflects on the remarkable prescience of David Foster Wallace, who understood even in 1996 how technology would create a generation wracked by loneliness.
It was 1996, and Rolling Stone magazine…
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