Here's a thing though. I wonder would he have been as determined to be so accurate if he knew that less than a century after the publication of his masterpiece, he would only have to click on Google Earth, Maps or Street View to construct his characters' strolls around our city with surgical precision and, in the process, save himself a couple of years work and, exile as he was, a fortune in stamps!?
Or, if he lived in the data age, would he have even bothered to create some of his famous scenes? For example, would he have taken the trouble to send Leopold Bloom off on a message to Sweny's Chemist, for Molly's prescription and his own cake of soap with the 'lemony wax smell', when it would've been easier for him to just order them online and get on with his story!?
... and my point, if I have one at all?
Might we just not bother doing things at all when we know that digital technology does them better than we ever could, or ever will, as standalone individuals? Or do we re-focus our imaginations on the things that digital increasingly allows us all to do and run merrily with it? Or do we do the opposite and work to undermine the machine and forge new paths of our own, irrespective of it? Or should we, instead, just redefine what 'better' means to us personally, and plan our actions accordingly?
I can't say I have a definitive answer but I suspect Joyce and all the other mothers of invention could put me straight on a few of the finer points!
More soon ...
"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past."
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