This Sentence is Already Too Long
just fine. Okay, yes, it has been a little while since the last post,
but that's just because I was busy writing. Well. Rewriting. It's like
writing, only with less visible progress. With writing, you can
feel reasonably assured that what you put on the page is
better than what was there before. Not always! But mostly.
Rewriting, though, you can spend a good six hours on a scene,
sit back, and think, "Yep… that's worse."
Anyway. Blogs are OUT. They're too long. That's the problem. No-one
has the time for them. The middle is hollowing out.
Everything is polarizing. We want
things to be very. It doesn't matter what. Whatever it is, only very.
There's no place for mid-length writing any more. There never was,
of course. But blogs used to be short. Then Twitter. Now blogs
are like One Day Cricket.*
But here we are! And it's already been more than 140 characters. So
let's continue. This blog will summarize what I've been thinking
about over the last few months, while I was busy making my new
book not worse.
Sneaker riots.
The first one or two were kind of shocking to
me, like a thought come to life. The next few were
disappointing, like repeated plot points.
But now
we're at, what, the seventh Nike sneaker riot? When
does it become less likely that they're continually being surprised
by this kind of thing happening and more likely that they're deliberately engineering it?
That's just a question. I'm just wondering.
Syrup movie.
Now in post-production.
I have been shown a teaser-trailer thing and it is
heartbreakingly beautiful. I've watched it three hundred times.
I'm not joking. The only thing that sucks about the Syrup
movie is I'm not allowed to tell you anything. But soon. Soon…
Privacy.
This interests me because privacy is obviously very
important for reasons nobody understands.
Generally, there's a much stronger incentive for companies
and governments to want to know things about you than for you
to keep your data private. That leads to an interesting place.
Persuasion.
This is the most valuable skill in the world,
right? People who are good at persuading others
become rich and successful; people who are easily persuaded
by others do not. But nobody really thinks about this. Very few
people actually go out and learn how to be better at persuasion,
or more aware of its forms. Why is that?
Also, the US as a culture is very advanced at soft persuasion (i.e.
the forms of persuasion that don't involve threats of bodily harm).
It is great at selling stuff. We have the Internet and free access
to vast stores of information but we're still buying products with
the cleverest ads, and electing politicians with the most reassuring
voices. I wonder what happens if a culture becomes so good
at persuasion that there is no longer an incentive to produce
products that are just objectively good, as opposed to well-sold.
Privacy + Persuasion.
It's easier to persuade people if you
know more about them. And if you can persuade them, you can
get more information from them. That's an interesting dynamic, too.
Piracy.
But this is too depressing for now so I'll blog about it later.
That's a lot of Ps, for some reason.
(* This analogy works because even if you don't know cricket, you
know it is stupid and anachronistic.)
