Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur,... → Learn More
America’s most talented writers are discovering the electronic network. In “Super Sad True Love Story,” Gary Shteyngart’s best selling trip into the digital future, Shteyngart invents a darkly disturbing world in which we all wear electronic pendants around our necks called “apparats” which reveal everything about us to everybody. In the future, he tells us, privacy will be dead and our blazingly public lives will be broadcast by transparent ranking networks (think Klout and Peer Index on steroids).
But, as Shteyngart told me when I caught up with him yesterday, the real challenge for today’s writer is that the future has already arrived. “You can’t make this stuff up”, he told me, while explaining that the present no long exists and that his most fantastic literary inventions such as entirely transparent onion-skin jeans (which reveal all our most intimate jewels) are more than simply figments of his sparkling imagination.
This is a two part interview. Tomorrow Shteyngart explains why we shouldn’t steal books.
A super sad true love story
Gary Schteingart, one of the most acclaimed, young, and Gary, I hope you won't be insulted if I call you young. One of the most. Acclaimed young authors in the world, particularly in America, the author of this year's hit novel "Super Sad True Love Story." Gary, welcome to Tech Crunch TV.
Thank you, it's great to be here.
So Gary, have you given a lot of interviews to technology blogs or networks or media about this book. Because it does deal in a very controversial way I think with the future of technology. Yes, I've been giving a lot of interviews to places I never thought I would want to interview me. Technological outlets, media outlets, and also places like The Wall Street Journal, that wanted to know why all the horrible economic things I forecast in this book are starting to come true.
So what is the, the major premise of the book for members of our audience who haven't had the opportunity to read it. And by the way, everyone in the audience who haven't read it should. It's an absolutely brilliant and hilarious and troubling book.
Well, thank you for that. Well, it's a love story, just like the title promises. And, well, there's two protagonists. One is a gentleman approaching his 40's who's of Russian American heritage.
Autobiographical is it at all?
Well, yeah, somewhat. A short, balding, Russian American individual. I don't know where I came up with that. And he's very much in the analog world and he doesn't really have any knowledge of the future. And in this future, almost everything is digital. For example, nobody reads books any more.
In fact, younger people find that books have a bad smell, so they don't like to have the books around. And he falls in love with the young woman named Eunice Park, who Is about 24 years old, and she is of this very digital generation. She has a major in images and a minor in assertiveness, and she's never really read a text.
So against all odds, the two of them fall in love. Lennie representing the old generation and Eunice representing our future. Meanwhile, America collapses around them both economically and in every other way.
How intimately, in your mind, was the collapse of America, particularly economically, with the digital future?
Well, one thing that happens in this future, for example, is that journalism is completely dead, the kind of journalism we know. Almost everything is product placement. For example, the New York Times has gone and it's called the New York Lifestyle Times and it's really just a series of ads, masquerading as a media enterprise.
And so as horrible things begin to happen to America, there's young - There's riots in the parks. The National Guard is sent out to quell demonstrations. But there's nobody there to really cover it and give it context. Most of journalists are simply blogging about themselves, live blogging about themselves, and there's almost no real coverage of anything.
So, It's a world that's very vapid and very surface, and without time for any inspection or thoughts.
Do you see the seeds of that world? In today's internet, digital culture?
Well, it is interesting. I mean, I'm not somebody who's Luddite or who's very much against new technology. I think new technology has to happen no matter. You know, I mean there's always progress. It's a question of how fast this is overtaking our lives and how much, how much we worship this technology almost in a religious sense.
And a lot of people believe that this technology will solve all our problems, the problems of a lack of democracy in many parts of the world, for example, all that will be Facebooked away, and as much as some of this is true, on the other hand, I think that what we're losing touch with is the idea of being human, finding time outside of the technological bubble, finding time to notice things around us.
All that is going by the side way. And I find myself being constantly online, constantly using my iPhone, and it almost feels like I'm constantly working. There's almost no time to sleep, no time to think about anything other than the 7 or 8 hours of sleep that I get per day.
What about in terms of news culture? I know that you grew up in the old, what, I guess it was Russia or the old Soviet Union? Do you see a crisis of news reporting in newspapers in America?
Well, you know, you look at something like Fox News and you read...you go back and watch 1970s Soviet television and, you know, the party line is quite different. One is right wing and the other is quasi-Socialist, but the truthfulness aspect of the two seems to be very similar. There's a certain viewpoint that has to be communicated to the population, and no other viewpoint will be tolerated.
So, I do think that there's a kind of interesting connection between Pravda, the Russian, the Soviet newspaper of the old days and today's, certain of today's media. Also, almost all the media is geared toward true believers, even if it's left-wing media, it's already geared toward people who share the same opinions as everyone else.
So, there is no kind of town hall where we get to hear different opinions, people login to the sites that support the view they already hold, and then that view is just simply reinforced more.
The “apparat”
Gary Shteyngart the author of "Super Sad True Love Story". Gary, the most stunning, shocking, controversial, part of your book is your portrayal of social media in the future. In this wonderful novel you portray a world in which everyone knows everything else about everybody immediately, as soon as they come across them with these devices which you call apparats in your book.
I just want to quote one wonderful sentence. It's on page 210 in the book. The woman goes into a clothes store. She finds out about the woman serving and I'm quoting, she said, "She didn't have a boyfriend at present, but enjoyed the reverse cowgirl position with the last one." an aspiring young media stud from Great Neck.
Now I am not sure about the aspiring young media stud from Great Neck, but do you see this world, this Facebook-intense world of the future in which everyone knows everything about everybody - is that realistic, or is it just a Fictional vanity.
No, it's not fictional at all. In fact, looking at my Facebook page some people have posted some devices that already being developed that resemble this device the aparat that is worn as a pendant around the neck of every character in this future world, it's already in development, and what it does is basically as you walk around you are being ranked by everybody for your attractiveness, your credit rating and everything like that.
So I think that's another example of something that's already very highly in development. I mean, look, you know, even without that kind of device, I'm being ranked non-stop. We're all being ranked non-stop. I mean, I have a credit rating. When I applied for my mortgage last year, I have Amazon ratings for all my books.
You know, there's sites like ratemyprofessor.com where you can rate your professor because I teach at Columbia I can be rated there. So, wherever you go, we are being ranked more and more. And part of that is because we live in an ever-increasing, ever-competitive society. America is no longer slated to be the number one country forever in terms of its' economic growth for certain, so we are scared and we find comfort in these numbers in these incessant rankings, but what they do of course is how do we know who we really are if all we are is a series of numbers.
Why did you use the concept of the apparat? Was it your way of suggesting that Orwell and the Soviet Union was Just the past, but also the future. Right there's a word in Russian, apparatchik, which refers to an individual who is part of the apparatus of the state government, meaning partially the KGB, for example.
There's a lot of Soviet Influence in this book. And there's a lot of influence of other dystopian fiction. For example, George Orwell's 1984. The interesting thing about 1984 as compared to the present is that in the past we feared a kind of intrusive government... force, Big Brother, for example, spying on you from every angle.
But with the advent of this new technology, Big Brother can sort of go on vacation or retire for a very long time because all the information, we're already putting it up for any government or, more effectively, any corporation that wants to know anything about us. And the younger one is, the more one doesn't have those gates to block personal stuff about oneself.
So when I was researching this book I was looking at a lot of pages, web pages, Facebook pages at that point there was also MySpace and Friendster and some of this other technology that's already history, but what amazed me was just how much I could find out about Debbie Johnson living in Virgina Beach or whatever.
And I could just find out almost anything, all the personal stuff that makes up especially a young person's life. Everything was there for me to see. So we are no longer - we are now co-opted into a kind of Big Brother Society by the fact that the more we share with the world, the more popular we are, and the more that popularity creates a sense that we are loved, which I don't think is the case.
What becomes of the human condition when we do away with privacy?
Well, I think what we can expect is a kind of - first of all I think we have a feeling that we are being unique individuals. You know, the internet wants to celebrate the wacky and the unique. But I think in some ways There's a kind of conformity that I find when I read people's Facebook pages. Because it is for everyone to see, or for a very large group of people to see.
What you want to do is to Create a sense where even your nonconformism falls within the lines of what's acceptable, or not for your peer group. So, there's actually how would all our world be, with all our lives being broadcast for all to see, maybe there's even less room for experimentation then there was before.
Despite all the new vistas that this technology is opening, is suppose to be opening. I kind of find, and in this book too, there's a kind of conservatism and fear that I think exists in future generations. And a lot of that comes from just the fact that, of course, this country for over a century, for a century and a half that set the agenda for the world, has been the predominate and the predominate culture and now that that is being challenged I think we are all fearful of what the future will hold, and technology offers us a sense that we are in control.
But I do not really think that our control over- our mastery over our lives and over ourselves has increased at all. So what you're saying is one of the causalities of the digital is the individual and the eccentricity. Sure, I read books by authors of the 20th century you look at Allen Ginsburg the poet for example, you look at William Burroughs, the writer.
I mean who are our Burroughs or our Ginsburgs today? Who just struts out and with such force and power transform the way we look at the world you know. And, and I, I don't know if you know, if Zuckerburg is, is, is the equivalent of our William Burroughs or Allen Ginsburg. I think this technology is maybe something people come along where this technology is used to produce something that is so insightful and so shockingly true to the human condition.
And when that happens I'm gonna take back everything I've said today and I'm gonna burn all the printed matter in my own home and celebrate digital revolution. But until now it don't think that's it happened, at least for me.
Why the present no longer exists
Gary Shteyngart, the author of Super Sad True Love story. Gary, you've argued that there is the disappearance of perhaps the intellectual center in American cultural life. Is that what books should be doing now? Are books the last resort for real discourse and dialogue in America?
Well, things change. You know, in the beginning there was oral tradition and people just spoke around a bonfire and information was passed on in that sense. Then, you know, the Guttenburg press came and things were published and many people who belonged to the oral tradition said, "Oh, no. Now everything is gonna change for the worse." But, of course, the printing press was a wonderful thing.
So, I think there will be...something new will come along. My problem is just that I don't see what it is right now. I don't see what's replacing books in their intellectual and emotional heft. I mean, what a book does, it's a very strange technology. It seems old-fashioned, but when you read 300 page novel or even a memoir or a work of nonfiction, you're kind of entering in a kind of Vulcan mind-melt.
You're entering the mind of another human being and for a very sustained period of time until you either grow to love or hate that person. Whereas with this new technology, you're entering slight sound bites that are conditioned very quickly. They have one purpose, which is to increase hits, increase ratings, make sure that many more people would see this and hear a person's very limited points of views, because that's the way the Internet works.
We can't...you and I for example, can't talk for 300 pages (not that anybody would want to hear me for that long). But it's condensed our attention span. My own mind feels very sliced and diced at this point where I can't concentrate on a large, long piece of work. If I go see a movie which lasts, what, 100 minutes, I feel my hand slowly creeping toward my iPhone and trying to see if it's buzzing or, or if it's making any sound.
And, and if I can't last through a 100 minute movie think of how difficult it is for the average consumer and I do mean consumer to sit through a 300 page book.
Are you on Twitter and Facebook?
I am on Facebook. And it's mostly I post pictures of my dachshund, my long haired dachshund, Felix. And I can see the attraction of it you known. It takes several years, to write and then promote a book. Whereas it takes 30 seconds to upload a picture of my dachshund. People see very happy when they see my dachshund, and they say, "Aww, that's great" and you know, you'll get 50 different comments on any media then you feel the instant gratification this something that this kind of media offers you course slaving away for three years on a book and then hoping somebody will buy it.
I mean that's quite a difference. So I understand the instant gratification part of it, I just worried that I too am being very much seduced by the fact that I can go on take a photo of a shaggy dog and get, and get some, and get, you know, some love out of my readers.
You're not attracted by the aphoristic nature of Twitter. I would have thought that you would have been master of the 140 character statement.
Well, I am very long-winded. So, you know, my books go on for a couple of pages to long all the time. So I think the 140 character would really scare me that limit. Also you know, I just got on Facebook about a year ago so I'm trying to really calm down here and just use one thing at once. And also, you know, does Twitter allow you to post photographs?
It does, right?
Yeah, I mean you can do links to photos. You can put your dachshund up, but you can even be on Twitter as your dachshund.
Ha, that's very interesting, but you know people really do care. Care about these things, for example, I gave a reading the Strand bookstore around the corner on Broadway, I brought Felix my dachshund because of popular demand. And he got a bigger standing ovation then I did, I mean he got a standing ovation people just sort of.
Why? Well, because people have been following him on Facebook and they think he's really incredible, and I'm just, you know, a writer.
Well, you definitely need to put Felix on Twitter. I think you could be a star. He could generate even more revenue for you.
Well, we're definitely gonna monetize Felix. But the question is, Which platform do we use? I think his own TV show is really the way to go.
Does he speak Russian or English?
Well, he's a German dachshund, so he speaks German quite well. He was just interviewed on German television as well.
He was? What about?
His views on America, 9/11, blah, blah, blah. The dachshund.
Is this another book? Sure, sure.
Could you...?
You know, these are really weird times to live in, but, for a writer, they're really exciting times. Because you can't make this stuff up, you know. When I wrote this book, for example, women in this book...young women wear something called onion skin jeans, which are completely transparent and allow people walking by to see, you know all their goodies.
And two months after the publication of Super Sad True Love Story, the New York Times had an article about the Paris fashion show, and one of the runways featured women wearing completely transparent pants or jeans. So what shocked me was that, you know, as a writer you're trying to keep up with society, you're trying to write about the present, but I write something and in two months, it's actually happening.
So in a sense, there's no present left. And as a writer who wants to write about contemporary society, writing a book set in the future is sort of the only way to capture it, because it moves so fast.
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post Book World, the...
