Ben Lerner's 'Transcription' Awakens Ghosts of Always-On Era

A famous writer named Ben Lerner made up a story called Transcription.

In the story, a poet and journalist is going to talk to his 90-year-old teacher, Thomas, who knows a lot about art and technology.

The man wants to record the conversation, but his phone falls into the sink and stops working.

He is too embarrassed to tell Thomas, so he pretends the phone is still recording.

The story asks: if a recording device fails, did the conversation really happen?

It also asks what we lose when we let machines remember things for us.

Without his phone, the man starts to mix up the past and the present, and remembering becomes like dreaming.

The book is like a small machine that passes a message to the reader, but the message changes depending on who is reading it.

The story makes us think about how our phones record everything and what happens when they break.