Inside Manhattan's Tower of Internet | The Awl
“So if you're running electronic medical records or corporate webmail, and you're in a message box and you hit A, and it has to go to Oregon and back, twice, before the A shows up, you notice it." [link]
Digital Silence | The Paris Review's Daily
The creators of The Silent History approach digital media not as engineers or even particularly enamored with technology—Moffett, for example, bought a smartphone earlier than Horowitz, but has called himself a “total ignoramus” about the code that makes their new novel work. Instead, they made The Silent History as a way to think about what kind of object a digital book could be. [link]
Writing with Antonin Scalia, Grammar Nerd | The New Yorker's News Desk
The first time Bryan A. Garner, a lawyer and writer, met Antonin Scalia—over breakfast at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons, in 2006—the Justice spent the early part of their conversation praising a magazine essay he had recently read on English grammar and usage. Garner, who has now written two books with Scalia, felt that it would be bad form to interrupt, but when the Justice had trouble remembering the essay's author, he suggested a name. [link]
Hiding in Plain Sight | The Paris Review's Daily
Why do so many American soldiers look, as one Brooklynite at the office of Cabinet magazine put it on a recent Friday, like they are trying to blend in to computer screens? The question was directed at Hanna Rose Shell, a historian, filmmaker, and professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, who had come to New York to talk about Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance. [link]
Interview with Eyal Weizman (architect) | The Believer
People tell you that architecture is built to protect you against the elements. Primarily architecture is built to protect you from other people. [link]
Every Single Thing You See is Future Trash (interview with Robin Nagle, anthropologist) | The Believer
You’ve said that “garbage is very scary to us culturally, and it is also… one of the single most fascinating things you could ever study.” And, at least back when you started, garbage was a “cognitive problem” that you didn’t fully understand. Why do you think most people, at least overtly, don’t react to garbage with such a complicated fascination? [translated and reprinted in Esquire Russia] [link]
Economic Decline | A research essay from Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives
In various rural exchanges, a single chicken could equal the value of: a pair of track shoes, a bar of soap, two bars of soap, five kilograms of maize, six kilograms of maize, ten kilograms of maize, two kilograms of maize seed, five kilograms of maize seed, a call on a mobile phone, or a visit to a clinic. [pdf]
“So if you're running electronic medical records or corporate webmail, and you're in a message box and you hit A, and it has to go to Oregon and back, twice, before the A shows up, you notice it." [link]
Digital Silence | The Paris Review's Daily
The creators of The Silent History approach digital media not as engineers or even particularly enamored with technology—Moffett, for example, bought a smartphone earlier than Horowitz, but has called himself a “total ignoramus” about the code that makes their new novel work. Instead, they made The Silent History as a way to think about what kind of object a digital book could be. [link]
Writing with Antonin Scalia, Grammar Nerd | The New Yorker's News Desk
The first time Bryan A. Garner, a lawyer and writer, met Antonin Scalia—over breakfast at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons, in 2006—the Justice spent the early part of their conversation praising a magazine essay he had recently read on English grammar and usage. Garner, who has now written two books with Scalia, felt that it would be bad form to interrupt, but when the Justice had trouble remembering the essay's author, he suggested a name. [link]
Hiding in Plain Sight | The Paris Review's Daily
Why do so many American soldiers look, as one Brooklynite at the office of Cabinet magazine put it on a recent Friday, like they are trying to blend in to computer screens? The question was directed at Hanna Rose Shell, a historian, filmmaker, and professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, who had come to New York to talk about Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance. [link]
Interview with Eyal Weizman (architect) | The Believer
People tell you that architecture is built to protect you against the elements. Primarily architecture is built to protect you from other people. [link]
Every Single Thing You See is Future Trash (interview with Robin Nagle, anthropologist) | The Believer
You’ve said that “garbage is very scary to us culturally, and it is also… one of the single most fascinating things you could ever study.” And, at least back when you started, garbage was a “cognitive problem” that you didn’t fully understand. Why do you think most people, at least overtly, don’t react to garbage with such a complicated fascination? [translated and reprinted in Esquire Russia] [link]
Economic Decline | A research essay from Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives
In various rural exchanges, a single chicken could equal the value of: a pair of track shoes, a bar of soap, two bars of soap, five kilograms of maize, six kilograms of maize, ten kilograms of maize, two kilograms of maize seed, five kilograms of maize seed, a call on a mobile phone, or a visit to a clinic. [pdf]
