(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 3/19.)
As Wink, Stanton and Goldman understand, few things in the arts have a shorter shelf life than meditations on current technology. Pen a novel, or film a movie, about the perfidious influence of bloggers and you're fine for a couple of years until bloggers stop being so influential. Write a play about relationships formed in Internet chat rooms and you're burned-out toast — maybe in just a matter of months — when the whole generational conversation moves to Twitter.
Deeper changes come just as suddenly. Take the concept of the information overload — a state of modern being that was, until recently, the central theme of the Blue Man Group.