/lit/ - Literature

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1735879]

Dearest /lit/, what good will books be when knowledge is downloaded instantly? What good will emotional appeal and subjective aesthetic be as we get increasingly information-based, increasingly machine-like? Our words are already digitized, are already stored on tiny chips, already they shoot through the airwaves in split seconds. Face it; our literary pursuits are fleeting as man is, are dying quickly with him. We may or may not hear the death rattle in our lifetimes, but the signs are there now. How do these tiny gurgles make you feel?

[Anonymous No.1735885]

Eh, I could care less.

[Anonymous No.1736015]

OP I hear you. But it will be many many decades away. these neckbeards dont really need to worry themselves with it.

And I don't really think that the book itself will ever become redundant. There will always be a place for fiction I do believe. It will be quite hard to download every feeling and thought you have while reading a book. That will be centuries away I'd expect.

Not that I wouldnt be happy if it came in the next few decades. I'd say if it did eventuate, books would become a fashionable or retro kinda thing, to kill time with.

[Insinuates gODS No.1736041]

>Implying that the religionisticals will ever tolerate a brain-2-usb technology.

That would be a giant breech in their "moral code"

[Anonymous No.1736079]

>>1736041
they will have to tolerate us, as we tolerate them and their bullshit, wouldnt you think? given that there is even still an influential amount of the scum around at that point in time?

[Anonymous No.1736105]

I care not of the form of books,

But I tell you, literature... it will only be obsolete when man has become perfect. Until then, we will write.

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1736121]

>>1736105
Man shan't reach perfection as long as the world keeps spinning, so there's no need to worry.

[Anonymous No.1736122]

>>1736105
>>perfection
why?

man needs to have something to work towards. without work, we are purposeless

[Anonymous No.1736127]

OP I really feel where you're coming from. I think of it as the death of the right brain. The large majorities of Americans almost have developmental retardation in their right brains. It is a place of fear and strangeness, and they've grown so comfortable they can't face it so they just shut it down. That's not at all what being human is about though.

Humans were not made to work for 8 hours a day on monotonous and ultimately pointless tasks, and there is absolutely no justifiable reason any of them should, ever. They are told to take pride in the act, even. They hold up the fact that they are killing themselves slowly like a bitter trophy. it sickens me.

And the fear of emotions! It drives me insane. Emotions are ALL that make life worth living. When you dig to the bottom of everything, there's just what you feel. Remove that and you will just sit there and rot, literally. People now have become ADEPT at either killing any rogue emotion that appears, or denying that they are even feeling it at all. It is fucking terrifying. Men especially, though women are really not allowed to feel emotions naturally either.

I could sit here typing about my frustrations with this all day. It frightens me, honestly. What humans have become, in America at least, is horrible. It's grotesque

[Insinuates gODS No.1736144]

>>1736079
Well, lets say we manage to tame the christianistics. What about the secterians from the east? They don't even tolerate archeology, leave alone evolution or cloning. The singularity will be the greatest crime of all with th,,

[Anonymous No.1736147]

>>1736122
expand your mind,
we are not purposeless until the universe bows before us

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1736203]

>>1736122
But we are purposeless. Life's lighter than a feather, cope with it. Time's infinite, we're at the beginning and there's now way we'll never extinct, or at least lose all previous culture, everything's transient the only thing we should focus on is having a pleasant life, and preferably help others having a pleasant life too.

And more on topic, to be honest, I really have my doubts if being a near-cyborg will make life more enjoyable. If your main pleasure is derived out of books, than you'll probably be satisfied after completing a book in 7 days, but it seems highly improbable that you'll get the same satisfactory feeling out of it if you can read the exact same book in a couple of minutes, that's not how our pleasure center works.
Of course, you might be smarter, but that too doesn't necessarily equate to a better life.

[Anonymous No.1736204]

information is not knowledge.

frank zappa fans will know how the rest goes.

[Anonymous No.1736220]

Long before we get to the point where knowledge is downloadable, we will become as Captain in the movie Wall-E. We have to survive that phase first, and I don't believe we can.

[INSINUATES gODS No.1736248]

>>1736220

And why wouldn't the religionisticals take the first opportunity to destroy this technology. Its more then likely going to break "the holy morals."

[Anonymous No.1736321]

>>1736248

For the same reason they haven't bothered to try to stop the computer/Internet/cellphone revolution: they either embrace technology believing it is benign, or they resign themselves to it with their "blessed are the meek" mentality.

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1736880]

>>1736041
>Implying that the religionisticals will ever tolerate a brain-2-usb technology. That would be a giant breech in their "moral code"
Religion is waning gradually.

>>1736015
>It will be quite hard to download every feeling and thought you have while reading a book.
Which is why subjective thought and emotion will be eliminated. Seriously, looking at it objectively, what will help us progress faster towards our goal of perfection? Emotion, from a perspective of efficiency-mindedness, is simply error prone and more or less an obstacle. When we can get rid of it no objection will make sense, you can't argue against it, because the attachment to our emotions and humanity, is, in itself, a useless emotion and reactionary. Someone earlier in the thread said that he felt emotion was all that made life worth living, but that's because he'd feel an emptiness when information was instantaneous. However, that emptiness is also just an emotion and can be deleted.

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1736889]

>>1736041
>Implying that the religionisticals will ever tolerate a brain-2-usb technology. That would be a giant breech in their "moral code"
Religion is waning gradually.

>>1736015
>It will be quite hard to download every feeling and thought you have while reading a book.
Which is why subjective thought and emotion will be eliminated. Seriously, looking at it objectively, what will help us progress faster towards our goal of perfection? Emotion, from a perspective of efficiency-mindedness, is error prone and more or less an obstacle. When we have the means to get rid of it, no objection will make sense. You can't argue against it, because the attachment to our emotions and humanity, is, in itself, a useless emotion and reactionary. Someone earlier in the thread said that emotion was all that made life worth living, but that's because he'd feel an emptiness when information was instantaneous. However, that emptiness is also just an emotion and can be deleted.

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1737096]

>>1736889
You sicken me.
Just because your PC is practically your wife, doesn't mean everyone should be merged with technology, and just because you don't have the social contacts necessary to enjoy life and its emotions, doesn't mean emotions can't be enjoyable.
And just because your individual life a sorry intolerable mess, does not mean mankind as such is inherently flawed.

You wrote about our 'goal of perfection', but you need to realize perfection cannot be a true goal per se, it's merely the best possible condition your goal can be found in.
In other words, you cannot strive for perfection if you don't know what it would look like. So? How would a perfect mankind look like?

>but that's because he'd feel an emptiness when information was instantaneous
Main solution to that problem is to not make recreational stuff instantaneous. It's like those ultrasensitive people that constantly have orgasms, they can't enjoy regular sex anymore, and, for your information, that is far from a good thing.

>However, that emptiness is also just an emotion and can be deleted.
If you hate being sentient so much, why don't you just go ahead and remove your prefrontal cortex? Heck, why don't we just go back to being chimps, just screwing around a bit and, except for the need to procreate, leading a careless life. Won't that be just be splendid ...

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1737282]

>>1737096
Where the fuck did I say I agreed with this theoretical technological advancement? Stop being a presumptuous dick

[Anonymous No.1737287]

>>1737096
All I can read is a whiny faggot with a fear to lose his pleasure of having a 13 inch dick pumping his ass.

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1737416]

>>1737282
>subjective thought and emotion will be eliminated
>Emotion, from a perspective of efficiency-mindedness, is error prone and more or less an obstacle
>When we have the means to get rid of it, no objection will make sense
>attachment to our emotions and humanity, is, in itself, a useless emotion and reactionary

These are all miles away from the consensus, not even transhuman philosophers like FM-2030 would spout off such bullshit, the only reason why you would post that, was because it's your misanthropic opinion. And since misanthropes on 4chan are all the same, it's not hard to make presumptions, since they're rarely false. Now, do you see where I'm coming from?

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1737510]

>>1737287
Also:
>mfw when I spend my previous night sleeping in a small bed with 3 fags and a black guy and I had more pleasure in 12 hours than you had in the past 6 months.

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1737604]

>>1737416
Nope, because no where did I claim it was a consensus. I'm proposing theoretical argument. I'm a misanthrope to a certain extent, but I have qualms with the things I'm suggesting even though from a logical stand-point I think they make sense, theoretically.

[Anonymous No.1737624]

I believe this pic is relevant to this conversation.

[Anonymous No.1737634]

I love emotions and what it is to be human.

After being very negative for years and years and hating everything, I realized I just shouldn't care. Really, even if we have a very hard time and feel sad, we at least had the opportunity to experience "something" and it may be worth being grateful for the opportunity.

I know this is very inane and silly bullshit, but still.

[Ted, a high school senior !!FLVqQBEAMuY No.1737756]

>>1737604
Why do you propose arguments that you don't support, nor the general public, nor any philosopher, nor any intellectual, nor any person that isn't a psychopathic cave-dwelling hermit with aspergers and a neckbeard.

And since these neckbearded dwellers don't actually have a grip on society, there's no one that actually can affect our fate of our kind with a future vision that encompasses humans being turned into non-sentient beings, just so they can all agree that our society is 'perfect'.

And no, the arguments don't make sense, they're flawed, they're contra-evolution, if this would be how our future would look like, we'd be a step closer to plants, or even worse, we'd be barely different from a pc, which is only something a hardcore aspie could strive for.

In other words, I don't see why anyone would post such incongruous arguments if there's no one that supports them, the only place they could somewhat thrive, is in a neo-noir styled sci-fi plot.

>>1737624
It can indeed be related, but we all now 1984-like societies will face several big revolutions, up to the point that one of them succeeds, thus making the NBW-type of scenario more frighting, since it's already more than apparent for decades in our current society, and the only way to break from it, is through self-reflection, followed by a personal revolution in lifestyle.

[Landon !!nBqZl5bQBVO No.1737772]

>>1737756
Because the milder version or aspects of it are somewhat likely. We may not become man-bots and literature may not become completely irrelevant, but it's definitely less relevant than it used to be and it's getting less relevant all the time. As a collective that values literature, it's fun to ponder how useful or meaningful that appreciation even is, or will be, in the grand scope of the universe.

>the only place they could somewhat thrive, is in a neo-noir styled sci-fi plot.
It was an oversight to not post this on a board dealing with plots and such stuff, then.