Some time ago, I had a furious conversation with a tech bro, which played out something along these lines: ‘How cool would it be’, said the tech bro, ‘if you could just download a language into your brain, Matrix-style, without having to learn it yourself.’ I spluttered out my gin and tonic and managed to croak: but that’s horrible! What of discernment, taste, style and nuance? What of the exacting but enjoyable pains of memorising words, sparking new connections, and forming your own peculiar store of knowledge? If new knowledge suddenly appeared in your brain, I’d call that creepy, akin to being possessed. ‘But it’s so cool’, came the response.
There lies the faultline between those of us who are suspicious of the mediocrities forced upon us by new technologies and those of us who wildly embrace said technologies despite their ill effects. The latter desire everything at speed. If they can order the world’s goods to their houses in seconds, and watch films and listen to audiobooks at twice the pace, why can’t they ‘upload’ skills as well?
Nothing is sacrosanct to technophiles. They can’t be far off inventing an AI confessional. For the moment, they have come for the act reading itself. How cool, they think, it is to be able to read a book without having to endure the tedious chore of picking it up and opening it. The current consequence of this is an app called StoryShot, which claims to be able to summarise millions of books in seconds, so you don’t have to read them yourself. Imagine being able to consume all those ghastly words without any strain on your poor eyes!
Summaries and short cuts, of course, are nothing new. Ancient plays were collected with neat synopses in the front (spoiler alert! Orestes kills his mother!). The Iliad was excerpted for the purposes of educating children. In the 16th century, anthologies presented readers with the best lines from the best poets, while books of sayings, culled from established authors, did the rounds at grammar schools. All of this was intended to help the reader towards the real thing. If you taste pity and terror in a summary of the Oresteia, you will experience it with all the more relish when you read the proper version.
So is it the same with StoryShot? In the interests of journalism – never let it be said that I do not go the distance for my readers – I downloaded the app onto my phone. To access its bounties, you first have to answer a few questions about your reasons for using the app. Most of the answers seemed to involve showing off (for my career; for self-improvement, etc). None of them suggested curiosity or even mild interest. I clicked self-improvement. You must then choose your preferred genres.
StoryShot is not for sensitive literary types, or even for anyone who has something called a book on their shelves
StoryShot is not for sensitive literary types, or even for anyone who has something called a book on their shelves. In fact, I think it is designed for people who haven’t encountered one of those papery things in covers in years. From the list of genres you could pick ‘Business’, ‘Self-help’, ‘Religion and Spirituality’, and various other non-fiction categories. In vain I scanned for ‘Fiction’ or ‘Classics’ or ‘Augustan Poetry’, hell, even ‘Poetry’, and in the end settled for ‘Politics’ and ‘History’.
Once in, the app takes you to a screen where you can choose a book to be summarised for you. There was no Politics or History to be seen. The books are, in the main, the kinds of things you see haunting the bestselling non fiction lists. You know the sort. They have titles like Why Everyone Else is Stupid and How to Think Quickly Then Slowly Then Quickly Again. The app provides a ‘Story Shot’, or summary of each chapter. You can also listen to the summaries, and download mind maps.
How is this different from, say, York Notes, I hear you asking? This sort of thing might be useful if you’ve already read a book and want to be reminded of its contents. In other words, for revision. But quite why you’d want to revise the contents of a popular bestseller, I have no idea. This is not an app for people who really want to improve themselves with any degree of seriousness. The early 20th century autodidact, slaving away over his law books at night school after a day in the factory, would spurn it. In the end, this, and other technologies like it, are supposed to help you appear knowledgeable on the most superficial of levels, in order to impress people who have done even less reading than you have.
Perhaps what’s saddest of all is that many people don’t even seem to care. Who will know the difference? It all reminds me of Dr Evil, the villain in the spy spoof Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, who, thanks to some nifty time travelling, pretends that he wrote Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us’. Others may believe him; but in his heart, he knows he’s lying. That’s what all these technologies are creating: a world full of posers, know-nothings and cheats.
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