Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Print “created” normal modernity by two means.
First, it created a new “soil” for elite governance, shifting political power from land and artisanal crafts based on oral culture to scalable knowledge-based behaviors that required print culture to exist and persist.
Second, it introduced what Eisenstein calls “fixity” (or “hardness” in our emerging l
... See moreKyle Chayka • How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines
If you take all of our technological innovations of the past two decades—certainly those in the fields of computing and communications—you cannot fail to see that their collective tendency is to breach the wall of isolated selfhood and to swamp us
Sven Birkerts • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
In his justly celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin sets forth the idea, now almost commonplace, that the copying and disseminating of, say, a painting robs it of its aura. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique ex
... See moreSven Birkerts • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
Maria Popova • Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age
“There’s this thing about speed that feels great…. Part of why we feel absorbed in this is that it’s awesome, right? You get to feel that you are connected to the whole world, and you feel that anything that happens on the topic, you can find out about it and learn about it.” But we told ourselves we could have a massive expansion in the amount of
... See more