has anyone ever written a good phone novel

ghost

Well-known member
as in a novel where the fundamental problem is conveying and reasoning about the kind of experience that people have in phone-life

not in a limp way like "distraction" or "texting my friends" but in a way that conveys the gargantuan quality of it—of being part of an online system of consciousness and knowledge production that asks things of you in an arbitrary way, that you can surf like a wave if you're smart and obsessive and unemployed enough

to me this is the defining phenomenonology of our age and so far the consensus of people i've asked is "nah nobody's done it yet, nothing close"
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
no one is talking about this is more or less along these lines although more internet than phone-specific and i remember it being pretty good
 

sus

Moderator
No

No one ever wrote that book for television either though. People will say IJ but being about television isn't the same thing
 

sus

Moderator
What sorts of phenomenological experience would you want captured? What you have is a good start but is there more?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
What sorts of phenomenological experience would you want captured? What you have is a good start but is there more?
Could maybe have to be with having your attention divided among several overlapping asynchronous exchanges, without people being as truly present, or rather their presence is felt as more of a distribution across channels than as something solitary and coherent? That said, I don't think I've read anything that really captures that,
 

version

Well-known member
Gibson's Pattern Recognition makes a good go of integrating the internet, specifically forums and email, into the novel.
 
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