Brian Sholis

- “In a just world, a college like Swarthmore simply wouldn’t exist. The mere possibility would be regarded as obscene.”

- “The way we talk about relevance suggests that it is a quality a work possesses, something an author has engineered or achieved, an accomplishment. This, too, seems wrong to me. Relevance may have more to do with the audience; it is a quality of our reading at least as much as an attribute of what we read.”

- “Text interfaces are much easier for machines to use. And as more work is done autonomously by the workflows we teach machines to perform, text interfaces are starting to matter just as much as human ones.”

- “What is our role in the world? To what extent is our institution a vehicle for political progress as opposed to academic excellence? Rational decision-making is impossible if these questions are left hanging, but at the same time it’s not hard to see why nobody tries to resolve them.”

* “Growth takes twice as long as you think and is twice as hard. The biggest advantage you can give yourself is to devote as much of your energy, resources and focus to the actual content itself rather than the sugar high of piling up big follower and subscriber numbers that are likely more quantity than quality.”

- “the focus of software services has shifted from manipulating data to manipulating workflows.”

* “I take extra care to prioritize extended time with friends. If you want a deep conversation, you need time. Instead of spending two or three hours with somebody, I prefer to spend two or three days with them.”

- "Even if we’re anonymous or confusing to other people, we remain pellucid and knowable to platforms, which establish a recognizable personal brand of sorts algorithmically. When we encounter ourselves in the guise of recommended content and customized ads, we are meeting our coherent public image, as the platforms have deduced it from an entire... See more