To outsource your memory to machines – which is what many of us do with regard to our use of search engines – seems to me to be fairly antithetical to the basic qualities of Jewish life that have kept the Jews alive for so long. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
When knowledge no longer becomes the commodity of the few, but in a sense becomes equalized by everyone having access, you lose some aspect of Jewish particularity, or at least a Jewish particularity that is fundamental to the construct of Jews as people of the book, which was always interesting. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
I don’t like being victimized by a machine or by other people’s demands on my time. I become resentful by feeling forced or incentivized to live a life I don’t want to live. That rage in general prevents me from entirely becoming enslaved by technology. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
I think that technology is essentially a continuation of a divestment of theological power that’s been happening since The Enlightenment. It’s the idea that God can see and hear everything. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
You know you’re a fool when what you’re doing makes even the post office seem efficient. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
E-books, which made their debut in the 1990s, cut costs even more for both consumer and producer, though as the Internet expanded, those roles became confused. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean – not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
The Jewish calendar, which is lunar, is a calendar of witness. The Sanhedrin, Jewry’s Congress, met in Jerusalem toward the end of every month to wait for the new moon. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community. Joshua Cohen Read Quote
Say you’re an American novelist, published by the largest publishing house in the world. Their goal is to make as much money from you as possible, to have as many people read your book in as many formats as possible. How can you hope to speak intimately to the numbers of people that represent the book sales required? Joshua Cohen Read Quote
