Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story is set in the not-too-distant future, in a society driven by technology and a hyper-intrusive form of social networking. One casualty of this future world is literacy as we know it. Books are out, as I note in my review in the latest Commonweal. So are fine periodicals:

In this brave new world, New Yorker Lenny Abramov, who suffers from the ancient Jewish affliction for words, turns for comfort to his dog-eared copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He pauses to consider the laudatory quotes for the author and his work on the first page of the book from the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times...even something called Commonweal. What had happened to all these publications?

Clearly, a nightmare vision. There are other themes in the book, but I mention this one because, as it happens, the December 17 issue of Commonweal has two other pieces touching on the question of how technology is shaping our lives, for good or for ill. Christine Neulieb's article "Changing Our Minds: Virtue Ethics for a Digital Age" offers some hope:

So there is no reason why we have to sit helpless and passive as the Internet re-forms us in its own fractal, impersonal image. Whether the Internet ruins our brains is in the end not a scientific problem but a moral one: How will we choose to use the technology? Will we create boundaries for its involvement in our lives, or let it shape us as it pleases? One can ask whether the digital revolution will raise or lower human intelligence, but a more interesting question is whether it will make us better or worse people. And that is up to us.

And Robin Antepara reviews Larry D. Rosen's Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn and finds it a little too enthusiastic about the distracted, overstimulated minds of tomorrow's students.Is Shteyngart's imagined future plausible -- and if so, is it inevitable? Can virtue ethics prevail? Or should we adjust our expectations?