Welcome to my Narrative in a Digital Age Blog.

I named this blog after an excerpt from an Allen Ginsberg poem, Howl (1956). Part II of the poem, depicting this line, is a lament of "the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb". Meaning, the detrimental state of industrial civilization, characterized by the word 'moloch'. Ginsberg expresses resentfulness toward the radios, smokestacks, prisons and buildings he references.

Moloch is also the name of a monster in the movie Metropolis. This 1927 silent film was said to have influenced his poem. I watched this film recently and found it to be surprisingly cynical and depressing, (considering it has no dialogue). It is set in 2026, when the class divide has reached crazy levels such that the working class retreats to an underworld of gloom and filth to live out their days, and the rich live in sunny splendour eating grapes and dancing to polka music. The entire film is dominated by obscure, elaborate technology.

I felt that Howl is appropriate in this discussion of Narrative in a Digital Age because it embodies so much of the popular opinion we hear about increasing technology. It is widely thought that the internet is changing the way we think and read, Google is promoting artificial intellegence, and crazy visual effects are rendering us slaves to visual stimulation as opposed to intellectual.

These are all relevant points, I reckon.
But what can be said of the sunny splendour of convenience? The necessity of accessible information to the writer? The sheer pleasure of talking to my homeboys and girls on facebook chat?

At any rate, we've reached a digital age and can't go back now. So we may as well be look on the bright side of it. And that's what this blog will try to achieve. An optimistic view of digitized narrative. I might fail brutally and throw my laptop out the window onto Bloor street, (but I really doubt this). My idea of high tech is pretty much a gee-haw whimmie diddle. This is going to be interesting.

Join me on the wild ride as I explore the trials and tribulations of the mind that is pure machinery ...