It’s like an author wrote a complete book, but the publisher decided to serialize it, mailing subscribers a chapter at a time for their convenience. Sure, there’s an experience over time—yet there’s no authorial intent. This arrangement leaves much on the table.
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By contrast, consider the Aro meditation course: aromeditation.org (👋). It’s a sequence of 18+ emails, one automatically sent each week after you sign up. But the emails aren’t written like MOOC materials: the passing weeks are carefully woven into each letter.
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They leave time for concepts to sink in before elaborating later. They spiral back, refreshing earlier ideas every few weeks. They lean on the reader’s growing trust. This series of emails feels like a much more profound evolution relative to books than MOOCs relative to courses.
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's fascinating experiment over his last 6-week walk struck a similar chord. Each day of the walk, Craig sent one photo from that day's segment to subscribers. The vibe yawns over weeks, a totally different feel from a coffee table book compiling a journey in retrospect!
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Games have really figured this out.
e.g. MOOGs like WoW choreograph players’ incentives and environments to invoke an ever-expanding horizon over many months. The design elements aren’t about raw hours: they’re more about how the feel of play sessions change, week to week.
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and I have been excited about how the mnemonic medium creates a context where readers continue interacting with an author's work after the initial reading session. It's a mass medium with a weakly authored time component.
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In an upcoming mnemonic essay, we exert more authorial control over time, adding questions which evolve over weeks of review sessions. But there's much, much more to explore there!
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Can you all think of any other good examples of a mass medium with a lengthy, strongly authored time dimension?
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Oh! Not sure if it counts as mass-media enough, but schools, boot camps, training institutions—any structured environment with strong control over its participants’ time. Military boot camp seems like the strongest version of this.
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Wait I worked it out—any experience optimising for indoctrination manipulates time (and also quality of attention) over days at least. Cult-like things—Landmark, other personal development workshops, some meditation retreats. If the instructors predict breakdowns—that’s a sign.
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