One of my heroes, Jacques Barzun, passed away this week. He would have turned 105 in November. I “discovered” him kind of randomly. I was always scanning for books related to pragmatist philosophy so I was mildly elated when I walked to the back of a used book store and found two — two! — biographies [...]
Tagged as:
books,
criticism,
culture,
history,
influences,
jacques barzun,
life,
pragmatism,
reading,
writing
What inspired me to finally sit down and write this is the literally ridiculous cover story in Newsweek: ”Is the Internet Making Us Crazy?“ It’s as good an example as you’ll find of something that overuses anecdotal evidence (‘one guy had a meltdown after he became internet-famous!’) and infers that correlations reflect causation (‘people who check their iPhones [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
autonomy,
behaviour,
change,
competence,
criticism,
culture,
distraction,
future,
ideas,
internet,
mastery,
memes,
motivation,
perception,
progress,
reality,
technology,
web
I have trouble keeping up with all links to great long-form journalism and essays that stream past every day, but here are my favourites (out of the ones I managed to catch and read and either remember or save (thank you Longreads & Instapaper)). In not much of an order: How the Internet gets inside us, Adam [...]
Tagged as:
2011,
essays,
favourites,
journalism,
longreads,
reading,
writers
So I saw this SEO copywriter joke a bunch of times yesterday. I love it: “So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor” (If you don’t know what SEO copywriting is, it means writing with specific keywords in certain orders to help sites rank [...]
Tagged as:
humour,
jokes,
memes,
networks,
seo,
social media,
social networks,
twitter
I’ve heard great things about Zadie Smith’s work as a writer, but I had a hard time bringing myself to click on this link. The essay is about Facebook, and the generation that made it, and the movie that everyone’s talking about. It also references Jaron Lanier’s critique of the internet and adds to a growing [...]
Tagged as:
change,
evolution,
facebook,
future,
generativity,
meaning,
philosophy,
progress,
social media,
society,
technology,
twitter
I just had a crazy thought about The Social Network. It turns on this controversial and often-repeated remark (found here) by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin: I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. I’m #TeamInternet all the way but I appreciate where Sorkin is coming from. I’m sort [...]
Tagged as:
cultural evolution,
facebook,
fiction,
film,
generativity,
internet,
movies,
narrative,
stories,
storytelling,
truth,
web,
writing
Let’s look at the genuine potential of new technology instead of dwelling on what’s being replaced — whether in remorse or celebration… This began as a response to Nicholas Carr’s Experiments in Delinkification a few months ago. I sat on it until Scott Rosenberg brought the topic up again this week with a series of [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
blogging,
context,
culture,
distraction,
future,
generativity,
ideas,
james wood,
knowledge,
Links,
lionel trilling,
matthew arnold,
mind,
nicholas carr,
perfection,
process,
psychology,
reading,
web,
writing
Lately I’ve been missing the old sense of wonder and enthusiasm I once had for the future. It seems to be a natural development in the life cycle: it was easier to get excited “when I didn’t know any better,” or hadn’t “seen it all before.” I’ve been able to get some leverage on that [...]
Tagged as:
awe,
change,
emotions,
experience,
henry adams,
jacques barzun,
machines,
religion,
society,
technology,
utopias
I’m not joking: when I was a kid I went through a phase of wanting to grow up to be someone who wrote “famous quotes.” From time to time I’d think of something that sounded profound and I’d think, “that isn’t so hard!” But then I wondered, “So now… how does this clever quote become [...]
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advertising,
blogging,
change,
craft,
craftsmanship,
discipline,
learning,
marketing,
persuasion,
philosophy,
quotes,
rhetoric,
writing
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields One of 2010′s most talked written-about books. For anyone interested in writing and storytelling this might be worth owning and occasionally flipping through for inspiration. A lot of great insights about truth and fiction — and whether either can really exist in pure form — much of which [...]
Tagged as:
anthropology,
books,
clay shirky,
evolution,
fiction,
history,
literature,
nicholas carr,
non-fiction,
reading,
richard florida,
sociology
I worry I enjoy ambiguity, irony, “meta” and satire a little too much. I’m worried my last post about copyright laws might seem too resentful (it is somewhat resentful — regretfully) because I genuinely sympathize with all sides. In the case of copyright, I appreciate the economic [and social!] stability it enables, and I want [...]
Tagged as:
ambiguity,
conflict,
criticism,
humour,
irony,
laughter,
meta,
perceptions,
satire,
writing
Yesterday’s announcement of new copyright legislation in Canada was met with the expected array of complaints from complainers, aka bloggers, slackers, n’er-do-wells, social deviants, hipsters, and cultural parasites. They received the news as an affront to their supposed “freedom” to exchange intellectual and aesthetic work and reshape existing artifacts into new “creations.” The dispute comes [...]
Tagged as:
copyright,
creativity,
drm,
entertainment,
information
