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"Blockchain chicken farm" & "Uncanny valley" reminiscent of the report-from-land-of-the-future works like Tocqueveille's "Democracy in America," Eco's "Travels in Hyperreality," Baudrillard @ Disney. 1/
But in a new body of writings which "Blockchain" etc form part, the lettered European aristocrat supplanted by promising liberal arts/Ivy League student w/ Northeast USA pedigree, now descending on San Fran, Silicon Valley, Southeast Asia, etc, 2/
Thus, West Coast can offer an exotic relief for discursive cultures of an implied readership invested in liberalism, literary values, liberal arts (basically New Yorker mag-milieu) for whom the author is a surrogate. 3/
These tendencies that came to surface when I read the books with a group of largely non-US colleagues, who remarked on the specificity of axes of cultural reference, from theories of cultural difference invoked to food cultures. 4/
This seems to reflect more general cultural friction attending shift from East Coast-publishing cultures (NYTimes, New Yorker, etc) to West Coast digital publishing platforms (Facebook, Amazon, etc) envisioned by engineering, new VC cultures 5/
Which is why that older reportage genre of lettered European experiencing fascinated unease at rising dominance of democratic American mass culture offer keys literary precedent for the new writings on digital culture. 6/
Which is also to say, peculiarly, that US East Coast intellectual industry's rivalry w the "new" West is not only a threat to their distinction but also an engine for it. It throws their a certain East Cost liberal arts publishing culture into relief 7/
With the result that Europe as point-of-reference for cultural derivation seems finally eclipsed, replaced by New York, Cambridge, New Haven, etc 8/
Permitting US East Coast intellectuals culture to assume the magisterial pose of emissary-of-culture-in-decline once assumed by likes of Tocqueville, Kristeva, Kittler, Lévi-Strauss, Adorno etc. 9/
Meaning the East Coast literary cultures are not so much eclipsed, as finally able to assume that role as ersatz seat of Euro-learning upon which the Ivys and US liberal arts colleges were conceived at their founding 10/10
