We often mistake the moment a culture peaks for the beginning of its eternal reign. We confuse the final, brilliant flare of a supernova with a new, permanent sun. Such was the case with the West in the 1980s, and there is no more perfect, more beautiful, and more tragic artifact of this climax than the television show Miami Vice.
The Shrinking Hourglass: How Time Reshapes Art, Entertainment, and Human Creativity
Introduction
Time has always been the silent architect of human expression. From the campfire tales of ancient storytellers to the algorithmically curated TikTok feeds of today, the evolution of entertainment mirrors our ever-accelerating relationship with time. This journey—from the epic sagas of Homer to the 15-second viral clip—reveals a paradox: as art becomes faster to consume, its perceived value often diminishes. Has our quest for brevity sacrificed depth? And as AI begins to generate art, are we nearing the twilight of human creative primacy—or standing on the precipice of a new renaissance?
Did language meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it.
Problems in general are often well posed in terms of language and language remains a handy tool for explaining them. But the actual process of thinking—in any discipline—is largely an unconscious affair. Language can be used to sum up some point at which one has arrived—a sort of milepost—so as to gain a fresh starting point. But if you believe that you actually use language in the solving of problems I wish that you would write to me and tell me how you go about it.
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| Irving Penn / Truman Capote, New York (1948), 2014 |
