They convene a group of people, then have them do mostly-time-independent things together over some period of time.
Likewise, MOOC materials often “unlock” over time, but the material doesn’t meaningfully interact with that timeline.
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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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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daf_Yomi and similar practices may be of interest to you, on the off-chance you aren’t familiar.
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I thought about this practice as I wrote the thread, and I realized I was much too ignorant to comment! Big thing I was curious about: do you know if the translation or interpretation text itself has changed so as to interact with this schedule?
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I’m pretty sure it has not (I believe the practice began in the 20s); however, there are plenty of other supporting materials which have been designed around it (ranging from static forms like commentary and study questions to dynamic ones like structured reading groups).
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(That said, I think the Talmud might be a slightly confusing example insofar as it is not analogous to a textbook but rather the phenomenon about which a textbook is written.)
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