This 1998 article anticipates what Chris Anderson would later name "the long tail." It's one of the most perceptive things I wrote in that period and one of the most blinkered.
I’m sometimes bored but never lonely primarily because of the internet. Retired and somewhat confined to my home due to problematic gut issues, as well as being a big outlier—center right lesbian in a very blue area—I would be greatly lacking in relationships were it not for the conversations and interactions I find here. I would also be very poorly informed.
Just recently I became friendly with a guy who lives across the continent from me through another Substack comment thread in which we discovered that we both have recently written our first novels. The internet is perfect for pen pals like us.
I remember initial (legitimate) skepticism of Wikipedia over concerns of outlier misinformation. But as I thought at the time, the entries are full of links that make it easy enough for readers to check the validity of statements. I wish regular reporting had that, especially in this day of opinion asserting itself as objective fact.
Recent concerns over “our democracy” belie the fact of our political polarization, but I suspect they also speak to the imploding of centralized thinking and the emergence of lateral, diffuse thinking. This too is a godsend but not without its own set of perils and potential extremism. But isn’t that just another way of saying life goes on?
I’m sometimes bored but never lonely primarily because of the internet. Retired and somewhat confined to my home due to problematic gut issues, as well as being a big outlier—center right lesbian in a very blue area—I would be greatly lacking in relationships were it not for the conversations and interactions I find here. I would also be very poorly informed.
Just recently I became friendly with a guy who lives across the continent from me through another Substack comment thread in which we discovered that we both have recently written our first novels. The internet is perfect for pen pals like us.
I remember initial (legitimate) skepticism of Wikipedia over concerns of outlier misinformation. But as I thought at the time, the entries are full of links that make it easy enough for readers to check the validity of statements. I wish regular reporting had that, especially in this day of opinion asserting itself as objective fact.
Recent concerns over “our democracy” belie the fact of our political polarization, but I suspect they also speak to the imploding of centralized thinking and the emergence of lateral, diffuse thinking. This too is a godsend but not without its own set of perils and potential extremism. But isn’t that just another way of saying life goes on?