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
September 5, 2014
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t write any more about Twitter, but this is not about Twitter as such — only about a new way of abusing it. So here are the people who run Answers.com. And here’s what they do: they tell everyone who is interested in the question “Why is absolutism bad?” (among other things) to tweet their...
September 3, 2014
What you see above is a picture of an approach to task management I’ve been using lately — a simplified and individual version of the Kanban model used in software development and manufacturing/distribution. I dislike the rah-rah cheesiness of the Personal Kanban website, but I have to admit that it gave me the idea that this could...
September 1, 2014
Pay attention to the links here: Tim Maly pointed me to this 2004 post by Christopher Allen that draws on the famous 1977 architectural treatise A Pattern Language to talk about online life. Got all that? The key concept is intimacy gradients. In a well-known passage from A Pattern Language the authors write, The street cafe provides a...
September 1, 2014
Just a couple of follow-up thoughts: 1) I had forgotten, but this piece by Robinson Meyer and Adrienne LaFrance got at many of the issues I talk about, and did it some months ago. 2) I keep hearing from people that they like Big Twitter just fine. Awesome! Then they should keep using it. (This is a genre of response that has always...
August 31, 2014
As long as I’ve been on Twitter (I started in March 2007) people have been complaining about Twitter. But recently things have changed. The complaints have increased in frequency and intensity, and now are coming more often from especially thoughtful and constructive users of the platform. There is an air of defeat about these...
August 29, 2014
Swearing “seems to be” getting more common? Talk about an unnecessary qualifier. Obviously, it has gotten dramatically more common in the past twenty years or so, or, it’s better to say, more public. And of course anyone who complains about this — like anyone who complains about the hyper-sexualization of public culture — is...
August 27, 2014
As part of the research for my current book project, I am reading The Great and Holy War, by my colleague Philip Jenkins. It is an absolutely extraordinary book. Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction: Contrary to secular legend, religious and supernatural themes pervaded the rhetoric surrounding the war— on all sides— and these...
August 26, 2014
An unexpectedly quick confirmation of some of the points I made in this morning’s earlier post, and an aid to explaining why so many people just can’t grasp views that don’t fit their pigeonholes. How Social Media Silences Debate: Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, has the effect of tamping down diversity of opinion and...
August 26, 2014
As anyone knows who has spent much time reading what I write, especially on Twitter, I am endlessly fascinated/puzzled/horrified by the malice and ignorance manifested in many online comments. I’ve been prompted to think about all this again by a handful of recent posts. Rebecca Mead’s profile of Mary Beard includes much food for...
August 26, 2014
So here’s a survey that wants to know whether I think I’m a narcissist or not. The problem — from my point of view — is that it begins by asking for my Twitter handle. So my first, and quite immediate, thought was, “So is Twitter — as opposed to Facebook — bankrolling this one?” Perhaps a rather suspicious question, but...