This is funny. It's a slight dig at those folks (of which I'm sure the author is one, or the self-effacing sort) who want every one of Bob's incoherent ramblings to be 'deep'.
"Because I grew up in a world where nothing that Mr. Dylan ever did was too insignificant not to be worthy of serious intellectual scrutiny, I immediately understood that this was no ordinary, haphazardly arranged, string of colored lights. It had to contain a deeper meaning."
A lot of Bob's work is the intellectual equivalent of a paltry string of Christmas lights. Your outlook with figure if that's an insult or a compliment.
As others have said, books and articles have a different purpose and audience. I enjoy reading books. But there are many, many good blogs and online periodicals that offer quality that you would not want to find in a book. For instance...
What I don't enjoy - and have quickly learned to avoid - is this certain type of non-fiction book that ought to be an article or blog post. They're easy to find now, they're usually just shy of or right at 300 pages, they have a catchy core idea and they tend to expound on that idea about as much as a blog post would. The rest is just there to service the notion of having a book. Ugh. They were I think a bigger problem 3-4 years ago, but maybe that's because I've gotten better at avoiding them.
I agree that it is exhausting. But it seems that it's a challenge of information parsing and application - not necessarily the volume of information itself.
I think there can be no doubt that the volume and accessibility of information exploding is a good thing. It will take time for us to find our rhythm with the new reality - we need tools on an individual and social level to cope.
I'm reading Bleeding Edge right now. I seem to remember it not being too well received when it came out and it certainly didn't get the kind of attention that was given to Inherent Vice. Wondering if folks here paid any attention to it.
But my god, Pynchon has an astounding mind. The breadth of his cultural interests is vast. His wit is seemingly unending, almost to a fault. Bleeding Edge is good - I don't think tech folks are his primary audience, but it's great to read it with some software background because you can parse a little bit more of the BS, of which there is a lot. Pynchon is really interested in the line between reality and conspiracy and if you have a tech background and are interested in his work more broadly I think that reading Bleeding Edge could help make his more challenging works more approachable. At least that's what I'm hoping for myself.