Theses in tweetform (fourth series)

[first series, 2012] 1. The complexity of the medium is inversely proportional to the eloquence of the message. 2. Hypertext is a more conservative medium than text. 3. The best medium for the nonl…

ROUGH TYPE

Lewis Mumford's _Technics and Civilization_ on the camera's influence brought this to mind:
> If #Instagram showed us what a world without art looks like, #TikTok shows us what a world without shame looks like. The old virtues of restraint — prudence, discretion, tact — are gone. There is only one virtue: to be seen.

https://www.roughtype.com/?paged=3

#NicolasCarr #CarrOnTikTok #TikTok #TechnicsAndCivilization #LewisMumford #MumfordOnTheCamera #SelfExposure
#GDM #EP3 #EP2 #EPGDM #IARichardsOnMedia

ROUGH TYPE

Nicholas Carr's blog

ROUGH TYPE
> There is no exit from #TikTok’s cinema. One college student I know, having recently downloaded the app, told me that she now finds herself watching TikToks until her iPhone battery dies. She can’t pull her eyes away from the screen, but she is still able to withstand the temptation to recharge her phone while the app’s running. Electrical failure is the last defense against #InfiniteMedia.
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=8677
#NicolasCarr #TheShallows #Addiction? #CellPhoneAddiction?
TikTok and the coming of infinite media

If Instagram showed us what a world without art looks like, TikTok shows us what a world without shame looks like. The old virtues of restraint — prudence, discretion, tact — are gone. There is onl…

ROUGH TYPE
The Net is.. an interruption system.. for dividing attention.. the ease with which it can be programmed to send and receive messages.. #EMail.. office workers who use computers.. constantly stop what they’re doing to read and respond to.. e-mails.. glance at their in-box thirty or forty times an hour.. each glance.. a small interruption.. the cognitive cost can be high... frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious..
#NicolasCarr #TheShallows
> “Measure” itself has a few meanings, and it’s worth keeping them all in mind. Consider something Robert Frost said, in speaking to college students in 1956:
“I am always pleased when I see someone making motions like this — like a metronome. Seeing the music measured. Measure always reassures me. Measure in love, in government, measure in selfishness, measure in unselfishness.”
Measure in measurement, too, would seem advisable.
#NicolasCarr with #RobertFrost #RoughTypeBlog #Management
> Some things that can be measured shouldn’t be.. Can you imagine #Google or #Amazon or #Facebook announcing, “We have decided to stop measuring stuff in order to spend some time considering what’s actually worth measuring”? No, today’s ethos is simpler, easier to execute: “If you measure it, the meaning will come.”
...
#Measure in #measurement, too, would seem advisable.
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=4970
#PeterDrucker #NicolasCarr
Taking measurement’s measure

“What can’t be measured can’t be managed” goes the old saw. But what Peter Drucker is reported to have actually said was “What gets measured gets managed,” which…

ROUGH TYPE
'..that #BookReading “understimulates the senses”.. makes the activity so..rewarding. By allowing us to filter out distractions, to quiet the problem-solving functions of the frontal lobes, #DeepReading becomes a form of #DeepThinking. The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind..[with] the firing of our neurons, it’s a mistake to assume that more is better. ' In #TheShallows #NicolasCarr makes me think of #KurtVonnegut writing that reading books is the Western form of meditation.
' “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains,” he says. The daily use of computers, smartphones, search engines, and other such tools “stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones.” '
#GarySmall quoted in #TheShallows by #NicolasCarr #UCLA #MemoryAndAgingCenter #Online #BrainChange

' “A compression of time characterizes the life of the century now closing,” wrote James #Gleick in his 1999 book Faster. Such compression characterized, as well, the preceding century. ”... information and communication technologies would have a particularly strong effect on our perception of time.. #speed with which we’re presented with new information and stimuli...our interactions with others.

https://www.roughtype.com/?p=6143
#NicolasCarr #JamesGleick #activityrhythm #workrhythm

The seconds are just packed

This post is an installment in Rough Type’s Realtime Chronicles, which began here in 2009. An earlier version of this post appeared at Edge.org. “Everything is going too fast and not fast eno…

ROUGH TYPE
"It is commonplace that the years between 1300 and 1650 saw within the intellectual culture of Western Europe important changes in the apprehension of time...Lewis Mumford makes suggestive claims in Technics and Civilization (1934), esp. pp. 12-18, "
The #ActivityRhythm of #NicolasCarr #BullshitJobs of #DavidGraeber and #WorkDiscipline of #EPThompson all take one to Lewis Mumford and the #clock I first read of in a #NeilPostman book.
https://libcom.org/library/time-work-discipline-industrial-capitalism-e-p-thompson
Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism - E. P. Thompson

Thompson brilliantly explores the changing relationship to time in class society, describing the change from 'time passed' to 'time spent'; the class struggle over the creation of "the new universe of disciplined time" in factory and school.

libcom.org