Het artikel van de week is (overtuigend) ‘ From the trenches to Mordor and back: World War I and Britisch Fantasy Literature ’. Daarin gaat Iskander Rehman op zoek naar hoe de boeken van Britse fantasy-grootheden als J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis en A.A. Milne beïnvloed zijn door de tijdsgeest. En vooral ook door hun ervaringen als Eerste Wereldoorlog-veteranen:
Britain’s most famed 20th-century fantasy writers came of age in a complex and interstitial era.
Interesting observation from Om Malik on how time (measurement) changed our society, and what that means for our future in the Age of the Gig Economy and Wearables.
The Guardian published a beautiful gallery of landscape photographer Michael Kenna’s magical trees
From the lakes of Hokkaido to the forests of Abruzzo, the British photographer has scoured the world’s landscapes to capture their silent guardians. Recommended.
Om Malik hits it on head:
No matter where I go on the Internet, I feel like I am trapped in the “feed,” held down by algorithms that are like axes trying to make bespoke shirts out of silk. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, they are all about the lowest common denominator. There is no real personalized value we receive from providing our data, we are just data sources for the popularity contests.
While reading How Fortnite Captured Teens’ Hearts and Minds in the New Yorker, I feel like I almost understand the Fortnite hype. I must be getting old. 😉
Amazon is now also officially in the surveillance business:
The company has developed a powerful and dangerous new facial recognition system and is actively helping governments deploy it. Amazon calls the service “Rekognition. Marketing materials and documents obtained by ACLU affiliates in three states reveal a product that can be readily used to violate civil liberties and civil rights. Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image.
Dan Nosowitz hits the nail on the head in I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore:
And then, one day, I think in 2013, Twitter and Facebook were not really very fun anymore. And worse, the fun things they had supplanted were never coming back. Forums were depopulated; blogs were shut down. Twitter, one agent of their death, became completely worthless: a water-drop-torture feed of performative outrage, self-promotion, and discussion of Twitter itself.
