Occupy Johnny Cake Hill

From Chasing the White Whale, David Dowling's examination of the MDM:

...the all-night feature of the Moby-Dick Marathon reading functions not as an eccentric solipsistic dare so much as a way to collectively expose the cultural anxiety about the death of literature, the death of reading great works unabridged, sans Cliff's Notes, summaries, digital or online shortcuts of any sort. In this light, the New Bedford reading functions almost like a sit-in protest [emphasis mine] against the technological threat posed to the love of long, difficult literature and the patience, endurance, and long attention span it demands.

The death of literature, the erosion of human potential by technology; and our collective struggle against these forces... Here's that clip again: