Jonathan Franzen: Loves birds, iffy on Oprah. (Image by David Shankbone.)

Jonathan Franzen has an excellent essay, “Liking Is For Cowards, Go For What Hurts,” in the New York Times, which makes many salient points about the pleasing, dishonest mirror that is consumer electronics:

“Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren’t people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.”

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Franzen discusses some lesser-known books he loves: