We are a quarter of the way through the new century, and the state of high culture is not what it should be. Individuals are no less brilliant, but there is a clear institutional lack. It’s as if the great publishers, film producers, and record labels can no longer provide us the artistic nourishment that we took for granted in the twentieth century. So much mainstream art can feel like a pale imitation of yesterday, marketers at the top chasing specters of what was successful a generation ago. “Artificial intelligence” is no longer an insult—wasn’t artifice to be avoided at all costs, plastic a much-deserved insult?—and tech behemoths long to jam us so full of cultural slop that we won’t be able to think coherently again.