The loom of the self

“It is hard to resist a technology that is also a tool of pleasure,” write Sarah Leonard and Kate Losse in the new issue ofDissent. “The Luddites smashed their power looms, but who wants to smash Facebook — with all one’s photos, birthday greetings, and invitations?”

That’s on the money. Things do get messy, confused, when the means of production is also the means of communication, the means of expression, the means of entertainment, the means of shopping, the means of fill-in-the-blank. But o...