In the opening pages of Ben Lerner's novel Transcription, the unnamed narrator mentions his mobile phone more than 25 times. He is on a train to Providence in the US to visit a German intellectual called Thomas, who has just turned 90. The narrator worries that he will fail to record the interview on his phone; he texts his wife; the guard scans his ticket; he takes a photo; he FaceTimes his daughter; he uses Google Maps for directions to his hotel. He even dreams about his phone. Then he accidentally drops it in the sink.
A Novel About Attention and Technology
The novel is set during Covid, but there is no mention of Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Last month Transcription was awarded the Orwell prize for political fiction. “The question of how certain forms of media flatten or monetise our attention – I do think that’s political territory,” the author said of his win. With its shiny black cover and stark white typeface, this slim novel is designed to remind us that the book is also a handheld portable device. It invites us to consider the relationship between art and technology. The smartphone has rewired us. “I was glitching, craving my cellular phone on a cellular level,” the narrator confesses.
Disembodied Voices and AI Ethics
Lerner is fascinated by the disembodied voice, from radio to voice notes. The novel raises the ethics of recording a person's speech to be used after their death – something that is becoming increasingly commonplace thanks to artificial intelligence. A new 13-hour audio version of The Odyssey is “narrated” by 93-year-old Michael Caine, but created – with the actor's consent – entirely by AI tools.
Above all, Transcription is about 21st-century anxiety, and particularly the experiences of children. Covid, environmental collapse, endless wars – technology is not the sole culprit. Thomas's granddaughter will only eat once she is given an unlimited diet of junk food and YouTube videos. Her “failure to thrive” is an analogy for contemporary childhood.
Screen Time Under Scrutiny in Toy Story 5
Digital culture and language have been much appropriated and speculated about in books and films. But rarely has the mundane problem of screen time come under scrutiny. The latest Toy Story instalment is also all about devices. Its release, in the wake of the announcement of school smartphone and social media bans for under 16s in the UK, was timely. There is no small irony in Pixar, creators of the first fully computer-animated film with the original Toy Story, cautioning against tech's encroachment. But this should not detract from the film-makers' message, especially given their knack for voicing fears of both parents and children.
As Jonathan Haidt wrote in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation, “by displacing physical play and in-person socialising, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale”.
The Challenge of Our Times
How we respond to these changes is one of the greatest challenges of our times – and not just for politicians. Toy Story 5 and Transcription are careful not to become anti-tech screeds. Instead they remind us of what we stand to lose. Imagination and memories can't be outsourced.
“More and more, we will be asking why it's important that this music was made by a person, that this sentence was written by a person,” Lerner has said. “Transcription is about insisting on literature's capacity to receive and transmit messages in a way that involves the mysteries of being human.” The novel is one handheld device that will never become obsolete.
