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 16, 2013
For some years now I have been a big believer in the Gospel of Plain Text: eschewing whenever possible word processors, and indeed anything in a proprietary file format that creates documents I might someday be unable to open — or could open only by paying a hefty upgrade feed to a software maker. Plain text files are very small and...
September 14, 2013
Most of what I have to say about Jonathan Franzen’s ridiculous essay in the Guardian is communicated by the image above, and by this Hilary Kelly piece on his utter deafness to irony, but I want to add one small note. Like many people who complain about the limitations of Twitter, Franzen seems unaware that you can write more than...
September 13, 2013
As the series cranks up the tension and suspense towards what will no doubt be a compelling ending, I can’t help joining in the speculation — which of course feels to me less like speculation than intuition. I’m quite confident in my ability to predict what we’re going to see at the beginning of the next episode, when the outcome...
September 13, 2013
The Bodleian Library at Oxford needs new chairs, and has commissioned designs. Above are the three finalists. Like the author of that Guardian report, I strongly prefer the Barber Osgerby design on the left. It’s a classically modernist shape, but with traditionalist elements I think will harmonize with its surroundings. I post...
September 11, 2013
Imagine a child who’s on her computer all day long because she’s playing World of Warcraft. Imagine another who is talking with friends and looking at photos on Facebook. Imagine a third relentless in his pursuit of hi-def porn videos. And imagine a fourth — this will be hard, I know — who is learning how to code and has...
September 11, 2013
I was looking forward to reading Henry Farrell’s essay on “tech intellectuals”, but after reading it I found myself wishing for a deeper treatment. Still, what’s there is a good start. The “tech intellectual” is a curious newfangled creature. “Technology intellectuals work in an attention economy,” Farrell writes. “They...
September 9, 2013
The new central library of the city of Birmingham — England, that is, not the one I grew up in in Alabama — is pretty darn cool, I think. It’s wonderful to see cities investing in big beautiful spaces in which to seek books and knowledge. And maybe every major city needs a building like this to signal its commitment to learning...
September 7, 2013
Jennifer Vanderbes wants to make “The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction” and begins by imagining two groups of early hominids. One group tells vivid stories and offers incisive critiques of those stories, and so survives; the other bumbles through its tales and so dies out. Read the whole thing for the details. Okay, it’s my...
September 6, 2013
On Twitter, my friend Matt Thomas has been retweeting students who tells us about their professors. (He’s just been searching “my professor” and RT’ing the more interesting results.) According to my professor, unicorns exist. I’m running with that. My professor is saying we are robots. Ok. My professor told us today...
September 5, 2013
So here’s what I do, in the digital realm, to limits the powers of intermittent reinforcement and increase my powers of adherence: when I have work to do on my computer, I either disable all notifications or shut down social media (Twitter, email, IM) clients altogether. Does this work? Variably well, and the key variable is how much I...