Worth listening to ... Andrew O’Hagan's defence of literature and truth in the age of the machines
I have listened three times already to this keynote address to the 2024 Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival.
It is a wonderful talk, employing the imagery of light in a time of darkness; it gives me hope in this troubled world.
To lure you to listen, here are just a few of his words and phrases that you might enjoy …
“… like a tiny piece of intellectual onomatopoeia …”
“We live in an era when our hearts’ desires - or a broad cynical guess at them - can be harvested by machines”
“… not to surrender our independent minds …”
“… concertinaed through the landscape of his imagination …”
“Enlightenment - a belief in an infinity of illumination in human growth …”
“… as writers and readers, we are frontline workers in the fight now for reality …”
“Lies and disinformation are profitable, in a way that the truth is not …”
“If we don't install checks and balances to the ruthless minds of our tech, survival of the fittest will come all the way around to extinguish the flame of human variety …”
“Your lives are beyond computation …”
“Rage against the dying of the light!”
Festival organiser
Click this image to listen