22 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
The Importance of Old, Well-Written Articles
...we overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. I feel this market failure keenly each day when I recommend a fine piece of writing that deserves to be read for years to come and yet will have at most two days in the sun.
You never hear anybody say, “I’m not going to listen to that record because it was released last year,” or, “I’m not going to watch that film because it came out last month.” Why are we so much less interested in journalism that...
1 If 99% of new content on the Web is worthless, how do we surface the old content for new eyes?
06 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Printed Book Readers are Hermits Avoiding the Global Village
The printed, bound and paid-for book was — still is, for the moment — more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness. Book readers and writers are approaching the condition of holdou... 1 
notes
notesUpdike's response to Kevin Kelly's article on digitizing library's in the New York Times.
06 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Newspapers, Unlike New Media, Can be Put Down
The intellectual shortcomings of past and present newspapers are, however, beside the point, because the real difference between today's video and yesterday's print is not content but context--a context in which the proliferating visual images and noises of the video/digital age permeate the minute-by-minute experience of our lives. Newspaper reading was a habit that accompanied the beginning or ending of each workday for millions; it did not constitute a continuous invasion of individual tho... 1 notes
notesNew media intrudes on us perpetually, with RSS feeds, television streaming, and music blaring. Newspapers and books are picked up in compartmentalized time, making them less intrusive and allowing us deeper engagement with them.
23 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
WWW has Replaced Sex as Propagator of Junk Data
For hundreds of millions of years, Sex was the most efficient method for propagating information of dubious provenance: the origins of all those snippets of junk DNA are lost in the sands of reproductive history. Move aside, Sex: the world-wide Web has usurped your role. A single illegal download can propagate more parasitic bits of information than a host of mating Tse Tse flies. Indeed, as I looked further afield, I found that it was not just Wikipedia that was in error: essentially every d... 1 notes
notesDNA has often propagated bad ideas, evidenced by all the extinct species throughout Earth's history; today the Internet propagates vast quantities of bad data.
