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.
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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.”
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The novel is one handheld device that will never become obsolete.
