But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

“Rock” can now signify anything, so it really signifies nothing; it’s more present, but less essential.

In the broadest possible sense, merit does play a key role: The work has to be good enough to enter the critical conversation, whatever that conversation happens to be. But once something is safely inside the walls of that discussion, the relative merits of its content matters much less. The final analysis is mostly just a process of reverse engine

If Elvis (minus Dylan) is the definition of rock, then rock is remembered as showbiz.

There is no intellectual room for the third rail, even if that rail is probably closer to what most people quietly assume: that this is happening, but we’re slightly overestimating—or dramatically underestimating—the real consequence.

There is, certainly, something likable about this process: It’s nice to think that the weirdos get to decide what matters about the past, since it’s the weirdos who care the most.

it often seems like our collective ability to recognize electrifying genius as it occurs paradoxically limits the likelihood of future populations certifying that genius as timeless.

we’re building something with parts that don’t yet exist.

idea that can’t be otherwise expressed—the belief that removing physicality from the public sphere does not remove it from reality, and that attempts to do so weaken the republic.

the Internet slowly reinvented the way people thought about everything, including those things that have no relationship to the Internet whatsoever.