September 2011
13 posts
“Those who would give up essential privacy and agency to obtain a little ‘frictionless sharing’, deserve neither liberty nor safety. And ubiquitous, covert and persistent web-wide tracking. And “friends”, with whom to “share”, “socially”.”
—Ben Franklin, 2011, probably.
“Most prose born on the Internet is highly defensive. Everyone is braced for audience attack and opens their posts with four paragraphs explaining why the remaining four paragraphs are worth reading.”
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“… You can bury your lede in 300 words of spineless cringing; you can undercut your point by wrapping it in shifty-eyed weasel words; you can pre-emptively backpedal so far you can’t even see the starting blocks—haters still gonna hate. Selling out your convictions gains you nothing and costs you the respect of your audience, and at that point you might as well just concede defeat and pack it in. …”
Play
Some Slides
I’ll post all of them after I tidy up and redact a bit.
No, I don’t actually think Merlin Mann is the Messiah, despite what I may have said before. But now, on top of producing (and/or contributing to) many of the most enjoyable things on the Internet and the airwaves, he’s also been invited out to talk to the fantastic team at Pixar (my kids would very happily swap Dads right about now). An inevitable progression, I suppose (MC at Steve Jobs’ retirement dinner next?), but I really like it when good things happen to talented, genuine people.
