media
More that can be done
Reveling in infrastructure
Logjam
- That there is a big danger in working in a single medium. The logjam you don’t even know you’re stuck in will be broken by a shift in representation.
Information Landscapes
Induced communication
I remain mystified by what seems like an exponential increase in the need to communicate induced by the availability of a ready new means to do so, just as new highway capacity produces increased traffic. Witness the cabdrivers who talk uninterrupted on the phone as they travel the city, or the truly huge numbers of people who speak on the phone as they walk down the street: the medium has clearly become the message, if the meaning of the message remains somewhat opaque.
Art is the one medium in which one cannot lie successfully
When we build, say, a business area in which all (or practically all) are engaged in earning their livings, or a residential area in which everyone is deep in the demands of domesticity, or a shopping area dedicated to the exchange of cash and commodities—in short, where the pattern of human activity contains only one element, it is impossible for the architecture to achieve a convincing variety—convincing of the known facts of human variation. The designer may vary color, texture and form until his drawing instruments buckle under the strain, proving once more that art is the one medium in which one cannot lie successfully.
Constrained by the medium
The inevitable reciprocation that occurs between the act of drawing and the thinking associated with it. The hand moves, the mind becomes engaged, and vice versa. We might ask: How much does the medium of expression actually constrain a design process?
A medium has a way of constraining our choices, and this influence may not involve conscious choice at all. The planner, in the end, sees and understands only those things for which they can provide expression.
Conventions of a medium
When a new medium borrows from an existing one, some of what it borrows makes sense, but much of the borrowing is thoughtless, “ritual,” and often constrains the new medium. Over time, the new medium develops its own conventions, throwing off existing conventions that don’t make sense.
If you ever get the chance to watch early television drama you’ll find a strong example of this. Because radio required a voice-over to describe what listeners couldn’t see, early television drama often featured a voice over, describing what viewers could. It’s a simple but striking example of what happens when a new medium develops out of an existing one.
Thoughts On Shitpost Diplomacy
An Article by Tanner GreerThat our diplomat’s first impulse is to resort to a self-defeating meme speaks to a broader problem—the sort of cultural problem instinctual reactions to crisis make most clear. This is a problem of an entire generation—my generation. We are a people that retweets when we could be reading. The minds of best and our brightest have been poisoned by ratios, “god tweets,” and memes. We came of age on Twitter, Tumblr, and 4chan, and still see the world through their frames. We find it harder and harder to distinguish the actual from the image; we struggle to disentangle perception management from problem management. This is what it looks like when the terminally online ascend to positions of real responsibility. Welcome to the age of shitpost diplomacy.
A bad tweet is like a deepfake of an idea
A Fragment by Ryan BroderickI guess what you’re describing is like a tweet that hits the uncanny valley of good and bad in such a precise way, with such confidence, that it just pisses everybody off.
Because if you look at this tweet for just a second you’re like ok, that’s a fine bedroom, but then you look at it, and it starts to unravel in your mind, like trying to remember a dream after you just woke up. And you’re like “what is this?” It’s like a deepfake of a person’s face.
…Ok, I’ve got some fire for you: A bad tweet is like a deepfake of an idea.
The perfect bad tweet is like something you read and you’re like “ok yeah” but then you’re like, “wait…”, and it just starts to come apart in your mind and you’re like that makes no fucking sense, just like this photo of this incredibly bad room.
How to write a high-engagement tweet
An Article by Rach Smith- Pick a stance that that could be mistaken as contrarian, but in reality most people actually agree with.
- Posit your argument as if there are "people" who have been spreading the opposing view. You don't have to be specific about who it is. In fact, they don't actually have to exist.
- Make the subject matter something that people get emotional about: gender inequality in tech, TypeScript vs. JavaScript, hiring processes, etc.
- Watch the engagement from people agreeing with you/bonding over your common enemy roll in.
Coevolution and the bad take machine
An Article by David R. MacIverSo when you have a bad take machine, you get the following processes:
- They make a bad take.
- People are outraged and talk about it.
- The bad take machine likes it and does more of that behaviour in future.
If, on the other hand, they make a take and nobody cares, they do not get reward and the behaviour is selected against.
The behaviours drove the spread of the outrage replicator, and the outrage replicator provides the selection mechanism for the behaviours. Thus, via the spread of our outrage on Twitter, we have operant conditioned the bad take machine into producing worse takes.
Which is to say, it's bad on purpose to make you replicate it.
The medium is the message
A Quote by Marshall McLuhanMonoskop
A WebsiteMonoskop is a wiki for the arts, media and humanities.
Woodblock Prints
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuIt seems to me that many printmakers are suffering under a delusion. Looking at current trends, it appears that recent prints are simply copying fine art and painting. Some printmakers are working in the nanga style of painting. Others are attempting to reproduce the effects of oil. Some cleverly contrived prints are often difficult to distinguish from paintings done with a brush. The question arises: Why are these printmakers working in the medium of woodblock printing at all?
For prints to follow in the footsteps of painting has very little meaning. The art of the brush and palette should be left to the brush and palette.
Several Short Sentences About Writing
Here, in short, is what I want to tell you.
Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn't say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
Sonorisms V
Leave space between them for the things that words can't really say.
To suggest more than the words seem to allow.
Perhaps it renames the world.
The Anxiety of Sequence.
It was all change until the very last second.
The debris of someone else's thinking.
You'll never run out of noticings.
Names that announce the whatness of the world.
What were you trying to protect?
You were protecting the memory.
The tyranny of what exists.
Do any of them sound first?
It sets an echo in motion.
Try writing for the reader in yourself.
So call it "perfection enough".
Toward the name of the world—yours to discover.Both models are completely useless
In your head, you'll probably find two models for writing.
One is the familiar model taught in high school and college—a matter of outlines and drafts and transitions and topic sentences and argument.The other model is its antithesis—the way poets and novelists are often thought to write.
Words used to describe this second model include "genius", "inspiration", "flow", and "natural", sometimes even "organic".Both models are useless.
I should qualify that sentence.
Both models are completely useless.The shape of the sentence
You've been taught to overlook the character of the prose in front of you in order to get at its meaning.
You overlook the shape of the sentence itself for the meaning it contains,
Which means that while you were reading,
All those millions of words passed by
Without teaching you how to make sentences.The Anxiety of Sequence
Much of what's taught under the name of expository writing could be called "The Anxiety of Sequence."
Its premise is this:
To get where you're going, you have to begin in just the right place
And take the proper path,
Which depends on knowing where you plan to conclude.You can get anywhere from anywhere
And if you can get anywhere from anywhere,
You can start anywhere
And end anywhere.
There is no single necessary order.Significant everywhere
Writing isn't a conveyor belt bearing the reader to "the point" at the end of the piece, where the meaning will be revealed.
Good writing is significant everywhere,
Delightful everywhere.It was all change until the very last second
Every work of literature is the result of thousands and thousands of decisions.
Intricate, minute decisions—this word or that, here or where, now or later, again and again.
It's the living tissue of a writer's choices,
Not the fossil record of an ancient, inspired race.Attention requires a cunning passivity.
A renaming of the already named
A true metaphor is a swift and violent twisting of language,
A renaming of the already named.
It's meant to expire in a sudden flash of light
And to reveal—in that burst of illumination—
A correspondence that must be literally accurate.The debris of someone else's thinking
A cliché isn't just a familiar, overused saying.
It's the debris of someone else's thinking.How each sentence got that way
When the work is really complete, the writer knows how each sentence got that way.
This small internal quaver
Pay attention now:
No matter how much you know or learn about syntax, grammar, or rhetoric,
This small internal quaver, this inner disturbance,
Is the most useful evidence you'll ever get.
Someday, you'll be able to articulate what causes it.
But for now, what's important is to notice it.
Noticing is always the goal....the faint vertigo caused by an ambiguity you can't quite detect.
What matter is what it points to.
Find out what's causing it and fix it
Even if you're not sure how.The urge to be done
"Flow" is often a synonym for ignorance and laziness.
It's also a sign of haste, the urge to be done.Talking and writing
Talking is natural.
Writing is not.It may seem strange that the manual dexterity needed to hold a pencil—or use a keyboard—comes later than the lingual and mental dexterity needed to speak.
But it does.What were you trying to protect?
As the piece evolves, you try to protect those original, effusive sentences.
Only to realize, at last, that what you're writing won't come together until they've been removed or revised.What were you trying to protect?
The memory of the excitement you felt when those words "came to you."
(Where did they "come" from?)
You were protecting the memory
of the excitement of really concentrating,
of paying close attention to your thoughts and, perhaps, your sentences,
the excitement of feeling the galvanic link between language and thought.The discoveries you make in the making
Style is an expression of the interest you take in the making of every sentence.
It emerges, almost without intent, from your engagement with each sentence.
It's the discoveries you make in the making of the prose itself.Where ambiguity rules, there is no "style"—or anything else worth having.
Pursue clarity instead.
In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself.The virtue of already existing
It can be overwhelming—the inertia of the paragraphs and pages you've already composed, the sentences you've already written,
No matter how rough they are.Whether you love what you've written or not,
Those sentences have the virtue of already existing,
Which makes them better than sentences that don't exist.
Or so it seems.Composition and revision
Revise at the point of composition.
Compose at the point of revision.
Think of composition and revision as the same thing.Squander your material
Squander your material.
Don't ration it, saving the best for last.
You don't know what the best is.
Or the last.Do any of them sound first?
Just try out some sentences.
Lots of them.
See how they sound.
Do any of them sound first?You're holding an audition.
Many sentences will try out.
One gets the part.We have testimony
Proof is for mathematicians.
Logic is for philosophers.
We have testimony.When you're interested in what you're working on
It's never hard to work when you're interested in what you're working on.
But what if you hate what you're working on?
It helps to examine the content of your loathing.
What is it you hate?The work selects its audience
Imagine a cellist playing one of Bach's solo suites.
Does he consider his audience?
(Did Bach, for that matter?)
Does he play the suit differently to audiences
Of different incomes and educations and social backgrounds?
No. The work selects its audience.