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
May 25, 2010
Technology Review: “On stage this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Facebook vice president of product, Chris Cox, promised ‘drastically simplified’ privacy controls, which should be available on the site on Wednesday. Though he declined to give any details of how they will work, the company is clearly...
May 25, 2010
Dear readers, in my ongoing and mostly futile attempt to simplify my life, I have put the kibosh on my tumblelog, or online commonplace book — it used to be mentioned in the bio to your right, but has just been ruthlessly excised. From now on the random quotations, photos, and links that once populated that site will populate this one....
May 25, 2010
In March my friend Brett Foster and I spent a few days in London (joined briefly by actor, director, theatrical impresario, and boon companion Mark Lewis) and, in Heathrow awaiting our return flight, decided that it would be fun to write a series of letters about our experience. John Wilson of Books & Culture was game to run them, so...
May 25, 2010
Tim O’Reilly takes a line similar to that of Steven Johnson: The essence of my argument is that there’s enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions – asking ourselves when is it good for users, and when is it bad, to reveal their personal...
May 24, 2010
Robert McCrum lists a few “neglected masterpieces,” among them, oddly, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.” Or perhaps not oddly: perhaps this is just an indication of the difference between American and British schooling. Generations of American schoolchildren...
May 24, 2010
Steven Johnson writes: In our house, we have had health issues . . . that we have chosen not to bring to the public sphere of the valley. We have kept them private not because we’re embarrassed by them, but because some things we already think about enough and would frankly rather think less about, and we don’t need to the...
May 22, 2010
I will have more to say about all this at some later point, but for now let me refer you all to Russell Arben Fox’s excellent response to Nick Carr’s forthcoming book The Shallows: The book’s arguments are broad, but its overarching thesis is a simple two-pronged one. First, that the internet has an “intellectual...
May 20, 2010
Via Margaret Soltan the story of a Russian controversy: images from the fiction of Dostoevsky in the Moscow subway. People seem to be particularly freaked out by the image above.The Moscow Times story Margaret links to doesn’t note it, but the guy with the pistol to his head is surely Svidrigailov, who kills himself near the end of...
May 20, 2010
Cathy Davidson, a professor of English at Duke, announced last year that for one of her classes, “Your Brain on the Internet” — yes, that’s an English class — she would outsource the grading to the students. I’m trying out a new point system supplemented, first, by peer review and by my own constant commentary (written and...
May 19, 2010
A long time ago (in internet terms anyway) I explained why I was an early adopter and then an early abandoner of Facebook. Given the path Facebook has followed in its treatment of its users — this chart tells you everything you need to know about that — I’m really glad I got out when I did, because I know what it’s like to feel...