Sprig-type operations drain agency and expertise out of the world. They centralize, aiming to build huge hubs with small spokes; their innermost mechanisms are hidden. They depend on humans behaving as interchangeable units of labor.
robinsloan
Robin Sloan’s Book Bag: Five Science Fiction Books That Matter
And just like that, four new books on my list.
Robin Sloan’s Book Bag: Five Science Fiction Books That Matter
Gibson-Faulkner space = “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” × “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Making culture for the internets—all of them — The Sea of Fog — Medium
People ridiculed George W. Bush when he called them “the internets” but he had it right. Technically, the internet is one huge interconnected network. Linguistically and socially, it is many networks, and they are very distinct. For example: There are 40 million Brazilians on Twitter. Do you follow any Brazilians?* This is a significant fraction of a service that many of us consider our internet front porch—and yet, unless you speak Portuguese, it’s invisible. It might as well be a different service entirely.
Making culture for the internets—all of them — The Sea of Fog — Medium
This is what RSS is for, these days: you set a snare, leave it, and trap for yourself the words you want to read most.
Summer Reading… and Programming.
I guess you could say this is a book review written… in JavaScript?
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Dance the flip-flop – Robin Sloan.
the flip-flop (n.) the process of pushing a work of art or craft from the physical world to the digital world and back again—maybe more than once
Newsstand Sophisticate: Rereading
Rereading, an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us “throw away” the story once it has been consumed (“devoured”), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book, and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories (children, old people, and professors), rereading is here suggested at the outset, for it alone saves the text from repetition (those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere) …
See also: William Ball and Mills Baker writing about Robin Sloan’s app, Fish: a tap essay, discussing things like stock and flow and David Cole’s personal canon.
The Kindle abroad « Snarkmarket
Even if you are not ever going to read an e-book, but want a device to help you stay connected and organized while traveling—especially if you’re going a bit off the beaten track—the investment in a Kindle (barely more than a hundred bucks at this point) can’t be beat.
Hadn’t considered it before, but this makes a lot of sense.
An exercise in empathy « Snarkmarket
An interesting mental experiment. “The core of the exercise, I think, is that you see yourself as just another person in the space—an opaque bag of bones—instead of as, you know, the movie camera. The privileged POV.”
