Human character, continuity of

“Let’s hazard an assertion: On or about June 2007, human character changed. To be more exact—because the phrase human character now feels antique—we might say instead that the human sensorium changed. By this we don’t necessarily mean a sudden and definite alteration in how we perceive the world—in the forms, sources, and amount of information we absorb, and in how we conduct our relations with parents, children, spouses, partners, mentors, friends. Yet a transition was set in motion, differentiating life before the omnipresent smartphone and life after, and dating its onset to the birth of the iPhone seems apt.” This is Nicholas Dames writing in the Atlantic about Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. He is riffing on Virginia Woolf, who said something similar, but about December 1910 and not about the iPhone. Anyway, I vehemently and respectfully disagree. The iPhone didn’t change human character. Human character is much as it was when I was a child. And my children are growing up…