The Trace

Abundance has produced a peculiar phenomenon: the erosion of consequence.

We have never had greater access to information, images, entertainment, or human connection. And yet contemporary experience is defined less by what we absorb than by what we replace.

Accumulation does not necessarily become knowledge.

A constant stream of stimuli leaves little room for anything to settle. Each new thing interrupts the last before it has time to acquire depth. Permanent availability diminishes the value of choice, because giving something up, the condition required for any genuine commitment, has become culturally undesirable.

A library requires selection.

A work requires exclusion.

A life requires hierarchy.

Without them, all that remains are fragments moving at ever-increasing speed.