There are certainly plenty of folks in silicon valley who could care less about quality as long as it hits the numbers. It may or may not be the case that the new management at TNR are folks like that -- if it is, that's depressing to say the least.

But there are also plenty of folks in silicon valley creating and empowering new forms of content and thought. Even buzzfeed, everyone's favorite target, has produced some awesome longform work to complement their listicle crap. To say nothing of the Mediums of the world.

To argue, as Wieseltier does, that this first group is indicative of a silicon valley ethos, is where he goes off the rails. By what right does he get to make that claim? Because Google hired Ray Kurzweil?

The most generous interpretation is that he's simply unaware of the humanistic side of the internet.

What worries me is the more likely claim that this stems from a certain form of engineer essentialism -- that technologists are inherently unable to appreciate a work of art or cultural criticism. He himself writes this:

"The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers."

Wieseltier seems to really believe that a bunch of pocket-protectored math geeks have taken over his beloved humanities and are trying to reduce it to a bunch of equations. To do so is, I still find, extremely shallow and deeply insulting.