Deciderization 2007—a Special Report
Deciderization 2007 explores the complexities of curating a Best American Essays collection, discussing the challenges of defining essays, editorial roles, the value of clarity, and navigating information overload.
neugierig.orgDeciderization 2007 is an exploration of the complexities and biases involved in curating a collection of essays, as well as the challenges in defining the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction.
Linksari added
It may possibly be that acuity and taste in choosing which Deciders one submits to is now the real measure of informed adulthood.
Alex Dobrenko added
a kind of Total Noise that’s also the sound of our U.S. culture right now, a culture and volume of info and spin and rhetoric and context that I know I’m not alone in finding too much to even absorb, much less to try to make sense of or organize into any kind of triage of saliency or value. Such basic absorption, organization, and triage used to be
... See moreThink, for instance, of the two distinct but related senses of “informative.” Several of this year’s most valuable essays are informative in both senses; they are at once informational and instructive. That is, they serve as models and guides for how large or complex sets of facts can be sifted, culled, and arranged in meaningful ways—ways that yie
... See morePart of our emergency is that it’s so awfully tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, preformed positions, rigid filters, the “moral clarity” of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new vistas of personal i
... See more
In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.