I think this is actually the answer: the word "just" is doing a lot more heavy lifting here than first meets the eye.
The digital era has brought a lot more quantifiable data, and with that has come a much easier (and in many cases automated) comparison, value-attribution, calculation of the probability of success, etc. The article speaks to this in the second half.
Previously this was largely impossible outside of government and other organisations with dedicated statistic collection. The author talks about how even sales numbers for authors were very imprecise and easy to exaggerate or fudge.
You could argue that the Digital Era has turned some of "life" (or at some of "art") into one big Goodhartian[1] parody.
That said, it does feel like the author has stopped believing that art has intrinsic value - and that its value might be different for different people, including the author. That is pretty much the mental step you need to take to end up in the parody to begin with.
I think this is actually the answer: the word "just" is doing a lot more heavy lifting here than first meets the eye.
The digital era has brought a lot more quantifiable data, and with that has come a much easier (and in many cases automated) comparison, value-attribution, calculation of the probability of success, etc. The article speaks to this in the second half.
Previously this was largely impossible outside of government and other organisations with dedicated statistic collection. The author talks about how even sales numbers for authors were very imprecise and easy to exaggerate or fudge.
You could argue that the Digital Era has turned some of "life" (or at some of "art") into one big Goodhartian[1] parody.
That said, it does feel like the author has stopped believing that art has intrinsic value - and that its value might be different for different people, including the author. That is pretty much the mental step you need to take to end up in the parody to begin with.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law