About this time last year, I lived one of the stranger episodes in my 33 years. There I was, a recently graduated English PhD, quietly plying my trade in a classroom at the University of Toronto. Sitting in my office one day, I got a call from CBC Radio, asking me if I would participate in the inaugural Q debate, on the sweeping question “Is the internet making us smarter or stupider?” I was still adjusting to my newfound qualifications—I was teaching a popular new class, “The Digital Text,” and had just signed on with Cambridge University Press to write a book on literature in the digital age—but apparently word travelled fast. And who was I to quibble with the wisdom of the CBC? I thought about it for about a millisecond before replying, “Yes, please!”
A week later, I was in another world. A CBC security pass taped proudly on my breast, I sat in the Q studio’s green...
Adam Hammond is the author of Literature in the Digital Age: A Critical Introduction.
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