> At the Grand Entrepôt Dramatique, plays are assembled like manufactured goods. One clerk handles expositions, another denouements, another entrances and exits. There is a clerk for rhyming couplets, a clerk for punch lines, a Department of Puns and a central office of jokes. Art has survived as an assembly line.
While his predictions about technology were way more accurate for the 1960s (his intended target), his predictions about society and culture are prescient for the 2020's with the advent of generative AI
> "With Montaigne and maybe Rabelais it was What Do I Know? In the nineteenth century it was What Does It Matter to Me? And nowadays we say: How Much Does It Earn?"
For me, this also summarizes the introduction of the Internet to the masses, all the way to the present day.
While his predictions about technology were way more accurate for the 1960s (his intended target), his predictions about society and culture are prescient for the 2020's with the advent of generative AI
> "With Montaigne and maybe Rabelais it was What Do I Know? In the nineteenth century it was What Does It Matter to Me? And nowadays we say: How Much Does It Earn?"
For me, this also summarizes the introduction of the Internet to the masses, all the way to the present day.