Tag: culture
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Heat Death of the Internet
A very short story from Takahē Magazineyou’ll be thinking about all day.
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Conscientious Objections by Neil Postman
This is a gateway drug for Neil Postman’s work. If you don’t know him, this is a good starting point.
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“I stand with penguins in condemning the ice in your drink.”
In 2020 I quit two things: booze and Facebook*. It’s unclear which has a more destructive potential, but both were excellent things to leave in the past. The lockdown had me spending too much time online, getting into dumb spats that don’t matter with people that don’t matter. Then Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism found me…
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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
The thesis: It is my intention in this book to show that a great media-metaphor shift has taken place in America, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. This was published in 1985! Postman’s ideas still work, and in many cases they’re more convincing than ever.…
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Limbo by Alfred Lubrano
Not since Susan Cain’s Quiet have I read a book that felt so specifically written about me and the people I know. I grew up in a small mining town in rural Ontario — my dad worked in a uranium mine and my mom was a schoolteacher. I went to university in downtown Toronto and now work…
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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Probably the most useful thing I’ve read this year. If you work in any creative field, this is essential reading. Don’t let the subtitle fool you. This isn’t an anti-technology book, longing for the good old days of ink and paper. (there’s some of that, but it doesn’t matter). This book exists kind of at…
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Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
Timeless. This book isn’t about the perils of technology. Postman isn’t arguing against progress. He is arguing against the loss of context, and the risk of modern thought turning everything into a measurable, quantifiable and rankable object. And the 30 years since the publication of this book have certainly validated his concerns. This is essential…