Lauren Cornell on the topic of critics perennially finding this gosh darn Internet thing: "Internet art is also troubled by a problem of perpetual discovery: while its history evolves, it is often not elaborated, but instead rediscovered, again and again, by the critical establishment."
Cornell is responding to a BBC critic's impassioned admission of ignorance: "as far as I am aware, no contemporary artist has yet harnessed this extraordinary technology to make a significant artwork. Of course, maybe I'm wrong and am missing something great [etc]"
Perhaps we should start a list of "shocked by technology" articles or quotes. Consider this essay by Lawrence Weschler in the New York of Review of Books on David Hockney's cell phone sketches. The succulent drawings completely pop (see above) but Weschler can't get over the fact that Hockney drew them with one of them there computer gadgets. He even tells us the brand--it is mentioned 11 times in the article.
It might rattle Weschler to know also that the string quartet score he was enjoying in a movie last night was made by people clicking little squares in a sampler! And that whole books can now be read on a "digital reader"! And that the supermarkets have this scanner thingy that "reads" your groceries and tallies up your total!
[hat tips cpb and afc]
[reposted after correction of egregious typos]