Tag Archives: Technology
Books are made of win, cont’d: “A momentary stay against confusion”
Clay Shirky says: [A] book is a “momentary stay against confusion.” This is something quoted approvingly by Nick Carr, the great scholar of digital confusion. The reading experience is so much more valuable now than it was ten years ago … Continue reading
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Books are made of win, cont’d: Chip Kidd gets skanky
…and gives a hilarious and enlightening talk on the creation of some of his iconic book covers: My job was to ask this question: “What do the stories look like?” [...] We bring stories to the public. The stories can … Continue reading
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Technology versus serendipity
Google announces Project Glass: Like Sherry Turkle, Bob Mondello, and Pico Iyer, Linda Holmes is pushing back against our increasingly “all tech, all virtual, all the time” society: Convenience is one thing, but I’m not looking for technology to reduce … Continue reading
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“Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved”
Psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle expresses perfectly some of the qualms I have about our plugged-in, always-online, invasively interconnected lives: The transcript is worth quoting at length (boldface mine): We expect more from technology and less from each other. And … Continue reading
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Miscellany, and an apology for long silence
I’ve been away from this blog recently, trying to devote some more time to fiction writing (but not yet quite comfortable enough to talk about that personal creative process, as I know others do). Working on this blog has been, … Continue reading
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Books are made of win, cont’d: Information needs hard copies
Jonathan Franzen makes the case for books over e-books: My problem with e-book readers is that one minute I’m reading some trashy website, the next minute I’m reading Jane Austen — on the same screen. I think, for serious readers, … Continue reading
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Twitter chooses profits over free speech. In other news: water is wet, and 2+2=4.
You knew this was coming, didn’t you? In the victory against SOPA and PIPA, advocates for the free and open Internet successfully fended off censorship imposed by government; now we are reminded that there’s nothing preventing online social networks from … Continue reading
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Miscellany: Blume, Hitchens, Lamarr, Tyson; The West Wing as science fiction; groupthink and solitude; what e-books can’t do; and the end of SOPA (for now)
Time for another grab-bag of links that caught my eye: 1) An NPR interview with the incomparable Judy Blume, who talks about censorship, how to inspire kids to read (and how not to), the folly of labeling authors and books … Continue reading
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Fight this bill, cont’d: SOPA and PIPA will hurt content creators, too
Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage, Trent Reznor, the band OK Go, and many other artists have written an open letter to Washington: As creative professionals, we experience copyright infringement on a very personal level. Commercial piracy is deeply unfair and pervasive … Continue reading
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Fight this bill, cont’d: What the Internet-killing bills will do, and why you should care
This one is important, and I highly urge you to watch. Clay Shirky brilliantly explains what damage the SOPA and PIPA bills will do, puts them into historical context, and — most importantly — links the issue to the larger … Continue reading
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