Day by day, problem by problem, American life is being fine-tuned and virtually perfected… But in other news, America’s economic and social decline continues.  Here, George Packer argues that obsessive technological upgrading and the country’s chronic stagnation are intimately related, “in the same way that erotic fantasies are related to sexual repression. The fetish that surrounds Google Glass or the Dow average grows ever more hysterical as the economic status of the majority of Americans remains flat. When things don’t work in the realm of stuff, people turn to the realm of bits. If the physical world becomes intransigent, you can take refuge in the virtual world…”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/Znc6Rx