2023-09-25

As I’ve said before, I admire when people change their mind and have the courage to share what led them to do so. Jeff Jarvis’s revised reflection on the death of the book in the Atlantic is not only a thoughtful essay but a dignified pivot. May we all achieve such balance with our respective multitudes.

I know it’s part of his brand but I just cannot help but be amused whenever I see John Waters command any mainstream attention. Here’s a great thought from his recent (digital) New Yorker interview (speaking of branding):

You embrace and make fun of what they use against you. That's what I did from the very beginning, calling [my movies] a "trash epic" or a "gutter film." One critic in Baltimore who hated me said, How do you beat us to the typewriter?

Over in the not-yet-linked October issue of Wired, Paul Ford has puts finger on the very subtle tension inside academia where creatives are now well-positioned to run away with the very AI tools thought to make them irrelevant at the expense of their designers:

When stuff gets out of hand, we don’t open disciplinary borders. We craft new disciplines: digital humanities, human geography, and yes, computer science (note that “science” glued to the end, to differentiate it from mere “engineering”). In time, these great new territories get their own boundaries, their own defenders. The interdisciplinarian is essentially an exile. Someone who respects no borders enjoys no citizenship.

Unless, of course, there are no longer any borders.