I Am Not a Gadget (Yet)

I just started reading Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, and it's been instantaneously off-putting and refreshing through the first couple chapters.

Lanier argues for new, more humanistic tech design that unlocks us from the often arbitrary designs of software, the web, etc, that can seem so inevitable and natural. He offers a fairly pessimistic view of things so far, but with good reason.

Early on, he lists some "things you can do to be a person instead of a source of fragments to be exploited by others".

> Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
> If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don't yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.
> Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.
> Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.
> Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.
> If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your inner state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.

That last one is especially challenging to me. I sort of love Twitter, but I consume 100x more tweets than I generate. Partially because I try to avoid those trivial external events, but if I'm going to continue to use it, I should figure out a way to actually use it.

I'm going to try to stick to these suggestions as I finish the book, and in the meantime I'm going to watch this video of the video game "Moondust", which Lanier designed in 1983.

Diada de Sant Jordi

Suck it Valentine's Day!

Today is Sant Jordi Day in Catalonia (or St. George's Day in England and elsewhere). It's the day that sees La Rambla in Barcelona packed with merchants selling books and roses to tens of thousands of people looking to honour their friends and lovers in a tradition which honours their Patron Saint, and has been for the last 575 years.

As Wikipedia puts it:

The main event is the exchange of gifts between sweethearts, loved ones and respected ones. Historically, men gave women roses, and women gave men a book to celebrate the occasion—"a rose for love and a book forever." In modern times, the mutual exchange of books is customary. Roses have been associated with this day since medieval times, but the giving of books is a more recent tradition originating in 1923 when a bookseller started to promote the holiday as a way to commemorate the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare on April 23, 1616.

Today something like 20 million Euros worth of books and 5 million flowers will be sold, so it's definitely a commercialized holiday. But still, compare the exchange of items so simple as a rose and book to the vortex of commercialism on Valentine's Day in North America (see we even make sure to drop the "Saint" as much as we can). As much as Sant Jordi day reflects tradition and promotes a communal experience, Valentine's Day promotes disposable consumerism and empty gestures.

So from here on in, I officially transition my allegiances from the spurious Saint Valentine to the heroic Sant Jordi. I suggest you do the same. Or perhaps you celebrate Love Day with the Simpsons. That's fine by me too.

If you want to read more and can read Catalan (or Castilian), check out today's coverage in El Periódico de Catalunya: Sant Jordi, de gom a gom.

And you can also follow the action via Twitter: http://trendsmap.com/r/KhSG

Elmore Leonard's Rules of Writing

Read the expanded rules over at NYTimes or buy the book of rules here.

My favourite rule:

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

This sprung to mind since Leonard's currently promoting his new book Road Dogs.

During one interview (with Charlie Rose), he said that a while back he was offered to write a review on a new Tom Clancy military spy book, but passed. "I don't read books that are more than 300 pages."

A man after my own heart (and attention span).