The Panopticon isnt as fun as it used to be I always smiled at prognostications of the death of literature.

On the other hand, kaleidoscopic invention, and the novel in which the reader is allowed to choose the next chapter by following an open path of options, like Cortazars Rayuela, which seemed so radical in its time, can now be pronounced obsolete. The hyperlink has done in the pleasure of consciousness skipping around without a firm plan and the existential nervousness, uncertainty and elation it elicits. Does anyone even pretend to think in a linear fashion nowadays? Not that we live our lives sequentiallyour minds are full of past, present, and future at any given moment. That is necessary to the human capacity to hope and torment ourselves at the same moment. And that is why no novel, even the most conventional, has ever been written in a 100% chronological manner. The distinction between cutting-edge and conventional, however, is almost meaningless now. All you have to do to experience a simulacrum of what used to be called the avant-garde is read the daily newspaper. And speaking of simulacra, an article on Sim City in todays New York Times provides me six hyperlinks along the way: Electronic Arts, promising improvements, the company turned off, Sim City Facebook page, and Kip Katerselis said in an interview. Which to choose in my readers odyssey? I pretend that the choice is irrevocable, and that I cant ever go back. Otherwise, there isnt even a chance at drama. The Facebook page is typically an endless sea of predictable low-level information, and doubtless publicity-oriented, so that is out. I disqualify it as a false lead. Promising improvements and company sound planned and practical, products of the usual technological triumphalism, so I skip them. Electronic Artsit does have art

in the title. If we as a society had recently moved from analog to digital, this phrase might crackle with possibility. But as Walter Benjamin let us see in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, there exists, in any given age, only a narrow window of perception allowing us to maintain a fresh and radically new consciousness as the result of a profound technological change. Television was exciting as a new medium for a short time, and then became familiar and routine. The same with movies, then video cameras, when everyone became a filmmaker for a few months, then laptops, and on and on, ad nauseam. Technological shifts can deliver only short-term thrills. Thus Electronic Arts get DQ-ed. This leaves only Kip Katersalis, so I choose him by default. At least I know nothing about him, so the pleasure of the unexpected beckons. All we learn, beyond the hyperlink, is that even single players of Sim City will have to do it online, even though it is considered a multi-player game. We're constantly tracking what you do and then feeding that back to players. They're tracking who is polluting the most or who is playing better. They're spawning challenges for players. They're keeping everyone connected. All roads, as it turns out, lead to Sim City. I do get a small visceral thrill from the idea that everyone is being observed, tracked, to see who is playing better. Perhaps imminent death is a part of it, or at least a gulag? On the other hand, Im so used to having my movements tracked online, having my privacy invaded, signing off on Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies I only halfunderstand, so used to having every piece of data, every click I

make immediately produce a related advertisement, that being watched by an invisible force behind the screen produces boredom in me, not terror. The Panopticon isnt as fun as it used to be. The avant-garde really is dead, it seems. Ill have to go retro and read a Thomas Pynchon novel to experience again the visceral paranoia and uncertainty that was once so easy to come by.