THE cultural purists would say we have lost our sense of culture and abandoned the humanities, e.g. the arts, philosophy and literature. The social scientists would just say technology has altered our taste and consciousness. This was the result of what American historian Daniel Boorstin called “graphic revolution,” which introduced various forms of media and dissemination of information.

“The movie made possible a new dissolution of literary forms,” Boorstin wrote in “The Image.” The book, with the subhead “A Guide to Pseudo Events in America,” was first released in 1962 when the silver screen and the TV set still had a charm of novelty that threatened to replace reading as a hobby.

Many of the world’s best literary classics have been Hollywood-ified, with all the effects that suit the comfort and convenience of the indolent audience. In some instances, the literary form is unwittingly misrepresented as the secondhand printed account that resulted from the movie.

While people have slowly abandoned reading, we began replacing our heroes with celebrities.

The paperback copy of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” has John Malkovich and Gary Sinise on the cover. “Gone With the Wind” has become associated with Vivien Leigh instead of the author Margaret Mitchel. “War and Peace” makes one think of Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn instead of Tolstoy.

Winona Ryder comes to mind when one mentions Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” has become Michelle Pfeiffer’s territory. Harper Lee’s one and only novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been largely identified with the late Gregory Peck.

And now comes Leonardo DiCaprio as “The Great Gatsby.”

Even before this week’s release of Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Fitzgerald’s most famous classic, the elitists were apparently ready to bash it with the typical “It’s not as great as the book.”

If you were a diligent student in high school, you must be familiar with the story. If you belong to the microwave generation, you must have read the Cliffnotes, SparkNotes and Dummies version. So let’s skip the plot.

The consensus on the movie ranges from pretentious critique, to rotten tomato, to “Are you serious?” I am not totally ready to join the fray, and I have suspended my own pretentious judgment on the 3-D rendition.

Overall, the Las Vegas-like overwhelming visual effects seem quite incongruent with Fitzgerald’s disdain for celebration of wealth. But the movie is a different form of art that offers a different interpretation of the author’s intention. If you didn’t read it, make do with DiCaprio.

Since Boorstin last wrote his critique of the modern civilization, reading as a hobby has been replaced not just by movie watching, but by Internet surfing and trolling, YouTubing, Googling, and other cyber-activities that have given rise to a whole set of new verbs.

In “The Image,” Boorstin wrote, “Our age had produced a new kind of eminence. This is as characteristic of our culture and our century as was the divinity of the Greek gods in the 6th century BC or the chivalry of the knights and courtly lovers in the middle ages.

“But every decade overshadows them more. All the older forms of greatness now survive only in the shadow of this new form.”

Maybe the best novels and other literary forms that can be written have already all been written. The challenge of our time is to turn what the great writers have produced into a new form, using the endless possibilities and overcoming the limitations of the technology that we have.

And maybe someday, I will be able make sense of the threedification of “The Great Gatsby.”