In Ben Lerner's novel Transcription, the unnamed narrator mentions his mobile phone more than 25 times in the opening pages.
He is on a train to Providence to visit a 90-year-old German intellectual named Thomas.
The narrator worries about recording the interview on his phone, texts his wife, has his ticket scanned, takes photos, FaceTimes his daughter, and uses Google Maps.
He even dreams about his phone before accidentally dropping it in the sink.
The novel is set during Covid but avoids naming Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Last month, Transcription won the Orwell Prize for political fiction.
Lerner said, “The question of how certain forms of media flatten or monetise our attention – I do think that’s political territory.”
With its shiny black cover and stark white typeface, the book is designed to remind readers that a book is also a handheld device.
It invites reflection on the relationship between art and technology. The narrator confesses, “I was glitching, craving my cellular phone on a cellular level.”
Lerner is fascinated by the disembodied voice, from radio to voice notes.
The novel raises ethical questions about recording speech for use after death, a practice increasingly common with AI.
A new 13-hour audio version of The Odyssey, “narrated” by 93-year-old Michael Caine, was created entirely by AI with the actor's consent.
Above all, Transcription is about 21st-century anxiety, especially children's experiences. Covid, environmental collapse, and endless wars are part of the picture.
Thomas's granddaughter will only eat if given unlimited junk food and YouTube videos. Her “failure to thrive” serves as an analogy for contemporary childhood.
Digital Culture Under Scrutiny
Digital culture and language have been widely explored in books and films, but the mundane problem of screen time rarely gets such scrutiny.
The upcoming Toy Story 5 also focuses on devices. Its release follows the UK's announcement of school smartphone and social media bans for under-16s.
There is irony in Pixar, creator of the first fully computer-animated film with the original Toy Story, cautioning against tech's encroachment.
However, the film-makers' message remains powerful, especially given their ability to voice parents' and children's fears.
Jonathan Haidt wrote in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation: “by displacing physical play and in-person socialising, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”
How we respond is one of the greatest challenges of our times.
Toy Story 5 and Transcription avoid becoming anti-tech screeds. Instead, they remind us of what we stand to lose.
Imagination and memories cannot be outsourced.
Lerner said, “More and more, we will be asking why it’s important that this music was made by a person, that this sentence was written by a person.
Transcription is about insisting on literature’s capacity to receive and transmit messages in a way that involves the mysteries of being human.”
The novel is one handheld device that will never become obsolete.
