Complex Numbers

Is Literature Dead?

Or does it just smell that way?

Since it's been a while since I directly addressed the topic of "writing" on this site, and I found this article, I'll take a break from the comedy to tackle something serious.

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/05/eighteen-challenges-in-contempora...

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

This list appears to exist without any sort of context.

Though I write, I'm not trained in liberal arts, so some of these items I just don't grok:

7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.

What exactly does this mean?

8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.

I understand the definition of every single word in that sentence, and yet, taken as a whole... huh?

10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.

While this is a point I do understand, as a science fiction writer, I consider this to be not a bad thing.

11. Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.

*whistles innocently*

14. Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.

English, please.

16. Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.

In what way?

17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.

I assume this means the ongoing battle between conservatives and liberals, which has gotten worse since the advent of the internet, which treats polarizing and extreme opinions with the same weight as moderate, rational ones. What happens is conservatives don't bother reading anything once they determine it has a "liberal bias" - and vice versa.

So. Am I pursuing a hobby in a dead field?