Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
April 26, 2015
I posted this on my personal blog, but on reflection I’m thinking that it has a place here, especially with our recent thoughts about attention. My buddy Rod Dreher writes, What I call the Benedict Option is this: a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up...
April 23, 2015
A few months ago Sandra Tsing Loh published an essay about the plusses and minuses of living alone — well, that’s what the essay is ostensibly about. But note the following words and phrases that I have extracted from the essay: Basil-cucumber martinis floaty Indian shirts sundresses sandals Uber Robyn’s cottage fresh flowers, art,...
April 22, 2015
The good folks over at First Things are unhappy with the treatment of Thomas More in Wolf Hall, the TV series based on Hilary Mantel’s novel of the same title: here is George Weigel’s response, and here is Mark Movsesian’s. I offered some thoughts on related issues when I reviewed Mantel’s novel five years ago for Books and...
April 21, 2015
This post on paper clips — and other “everyday things”: Henry Petroski really should have been mentioned in the post — should be taken as yet another reminder of some important truths: Non-electronic technologies are still technologies; Technologies that have been developed (in some cases perfected) over decades are even...
April 21, 2015
So let’s recap. Here are my original theses for disputation. Responses: Chad Wellmon Me Ned O’Gorman Me Andrew Piper Julia Ticota Ned O’Gorman Michael Sacasas Just a wonderful conversation — I am so grateful for the responses. The past few weeks have been exceptionally busy for me, so right now I just have time to make a few...
April 17, 2015
I’ve written a review of Mark Greif’s The Age of the Crisis of Man for Books and Culture, but it won’t appear for a few months. I think Greif has written a very important, deeply researched, extremely intelligent, and greatly flawed book. I want to take a few minutes here to expand on something I say in the review about its flaws...
April 15, 2015
Sobering thoughts from Matthew Loftus in response to Wesley Hill’s new book Spiritual Friendship: I think a lot of this decline in human relationships can be traced to individualism and consumer culture, and I’d argue that our uncritical use of technology and social mobility make this worse by giving us more power to isolate...
April 14, 2015
Fantastic rant this morning from Maciej Ceglowski, creator of the invaluable Pinboard, about this new service: “Hello Alfred Raises $10.5M To Automate Your Chores”. Part of the white-hot trend in scriptable people. — Pinboard (@Pinboard) April 14, 2015 “Customers are assigned their own home manager, also called an Alfred, and...
April 11, 2015
Here’s Nick Carr commenting on the recent dialogue at the Infernal Machine between me and Andrew Piper: It’s possible to sketch out an alternative history of the net in which thoughtful reading and commentary play a bigger role. In its original form, the blog, or web log, was more a reader’s medium than a writer’s medium. And one...
April 8, 2015
Ned O’Gorman, in his response to my 79 theses, writes: Of course technologies want. The button wants to be pushed; the trigger wants to be pulled; the text wants to be read — each of these want as much as I want to go to bed, get a drink, or get up out of my chair and walk around, though they may want in a different way than I want....