David Pennington
@davidpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
“Once you learn how to learn, you have only to discover what is worth learning.”
Austin Kleon • Dead week approacheth!
- Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.
Antonio Gramsci - Wikiquote
Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash‐up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution. Digital Humanities means iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. It honors the quality of results; but it also honors the steps by means of which results are obtained... See more
Todd Presner • The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0
"No wonder that men who live day in and day out with such machines and become dependent on them begin to believe that men are merely machines. They are reflecting what they themselves have become."
Introducing Woolgather
Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: if you have had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to... See more
Ross Douthat • The fall of the intellectual
Alas, we’re too dumb for the big ideas. Pop psychology, it is! Pass me my copy of Atomic Habits.
humans talking like machines
Big Think • Mechanized Minds: AI’s Hidden Impact on Human Thought
With LLMs all but conversing with their userbase, the variations between human and “talking like machines” is thinner by the day. I think we also see this across movies and modern books and social media. Maybe it started with the listicle format of content being all the rage, or content experts saying there is a specific way to set up content on the page for maximum human engagement.
Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills that demand time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the surface.
To collect well is to resist algorithmic influence. A true collection reflects deeply personal values and a genuine desire to... See more
To collect well is to resist algorithmic influence. A true collection reflects deeply personal values and a genuine desire to... See more
Patricia Hurducaș • Archives: Anchors For Attention
It isn’t that you don’t “get” tech, it’s that the tech you use every day is no longer built for you, and as a result feels a very specific kind of insane.
Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At • Never Forgive Them
This obsession with the immediate “unburdening” of a thing you created is common in non-Japanese contexts, but I posit: The Japanese way is the correct way. Be an adult. Own your garbage. Garbage responsibility is something we’ve long since abdicated not only to faceless cans on street corners (or just all over the street, as seems to be the case... See more