Song of the day: “Black Friday”

Tumblr: we might need this later

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  Would’ve been cool if Steve Winwood had played this for Super Bowl Preshow, instead of Higher Love. The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys- Traffic- Live - 1972 (via 74sodapop)

  
  

  02/08/10

• In what way do technological systems have moral characteristics? We value books as a technological system (at least, at The New Yorker, we do), but why? In the history of publishing, book writers and readers surely have engaged in as much mendacity, manipulation, triviality, confusion, and wasted time—as a proportion of the whole endeavor—as bloggers and tweeters do today. A technological system is as indifferent to the character of its user as dice are to the character of the craps player. And yet the qualities of excellence in a great book do seem specific to the book’s form, and what it requires of its human partner. The book’s disappearance might well herald the diminishment of those qualities in culture. The qualities of excellence in a great tweet—let’s stipulate that these might include spontaneous humor and the real-time witnessing of crimes against humanity—are also particular to its form. It may be that the generation growing up with Twitter will come to feel that the distinctive qualities the technology requires—such as living without privacy in an electronic hive, bee-like—is natural and desirable. For the rest of us, like all forms of evolution, it will require adaptation. Resistance is part of adaptation. Was George’s original online essay and the online hive’s reaction to it, followed by George’s online response to the hive, an example of resistance to electronic media, or an example of adaptation? We know this: Twitter doesn’t care.

  Does Twitter Have Moral Characteristics?: Think Tank : The New Yorker

  02/08/10

• So many crappy novels get published. Why not mine?

  Dani Shapiro, in the NYT, quoted by Maud Newton in “On being intimidated by a favorite writer’s work.”

  02/07/10

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  Star Fleet authorized coffee break. Fifteen minutes. (If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger…: Adventures in the Vast Wasteland #9)

  
  

  02/05/10

• The End of the Internet as We Know It

  A Q&A between Paul Ford, an associate editor at Harper’s Magazine, and Choire Sicha, a contributor at The Awl.

  Paul: We’re really into the idea of subscribers giving us money in exchange for our product.
  Choire: As a “business model.” I think I see.
  Paul: I’m NOT SAYING that giving away things on the Internet is bad.
  Choire: For those interested, the verified paid circulation was 172,709 subscribers (as reported in the first half of ‘08).
  Paul: Yes! And about 25-30% of those at any time are registered for the website. AND here is the key: our site is basically profitable, because it saves us so much in subscriber acquisition.
  Paul: I say “profitable” because this is the world of magazines and everything related to money is insane.
  Choire: You mean, people come to the website… and subscribe?
  Paul: Thousands and thousands! More every day! I have charts.
  Choire: Wow, charts?
  Paul: I cannot share them but they look like this:
  Paul: Feb 01 ######################################(76)
  Paul: Does that not whet the appetite?

  
  Read the whole article.

  02/04/10