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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      This deep digitization. Shallow digitization turns a paper phone book into a digital one. Deep digitization makes it part of the phone app, where the actual number disappears behind a UI as one among many addressing protocols.

      1 reply 4 retweets 36 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Shallow digitization puts maps online in nicely vectorized form (remember the bitmapped mapquest ones that google disrupted?) Deep digitization willl eventually put them several navigation gestures behind an AR directions UI. 2d bird’s eye view projection will be mostly useless.

      1 reply 1 retweet 19 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      You get the idea. The first things to get deep digitized were things that had a naturally structured, instrumental data DNA and made sense as a feature of some products. But it won’t stop there. *Everything* we think of as having a “natural” printed form factor will transform.

      1 reply 2 retweets 21 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      All printed matter is just uninvented technology. This is why when I look at books now, it feels like I’m looking at doomed tech history. With deep digitization, almost none of them will make sense as “books” at all. Each is the ancestor of an unborn future digital beast.

      1 reply 6 retweets 34 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Books on your shelves are of 3 types. First: Those that have obvious instrumental non-book future forms like atlases. This is the easy case we just discussed. Low hanging fruit on the Gutenberg tree. These are really books specifying future products we can already imagine.

      1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Second: “Classics” that will retain a sentimental form embedded in a tech “shell” (Shakespeare behind a sentiments-and-tropes analytics UI?) Already, we access classics like data mines. Recently, I searched a classic on Kindle for occurances of a phrase to support an argument.

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Third: Non-classics. These are perhaps the most interesting. Stuff that humanity is not collectively sentimental enough to deep-digitize via the kind of mummification we’re doing to Shakespeare’s works. We’ll just re-implement their utilitarian *functions* in updated form.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Plenty of examples already. Most textbooks should be sets of interactive apps a la Papert. Most data-driven empirical analysis should be in wolframesque computational essay form. Tons of opportunity here. Every piece of shallow-digitized printed matter is a future invention.

      1 reply 2 retweets 31 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      My own writing, I’m happy to admit, is not “classic”. Much of it should be something else, like games, web apps, datasets with exploration UIs, ‘pedia entries etc. Text was just the minimum viable form factor because words are the cheapest prototyping medium for any idea.

      3 replies 1 retweet 31 likes
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    10. Christopher G‏ @galtenberg 19 Mar 2019
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      Replying to @vgr

      But I'm not sure you could convey your "you-ness" in any of those other forms. That's how writing remains state-of-the-art.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Mar 2019
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      Replying to @galtenberg

      Most media allow authorship to be conveyed. Movies, comics, video games...

      9:18 AM - 19 Mar 2019
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. brrr Seitz‏ @BillSeitz 20 Mar 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @galtenberg

          I think he means that your Voice may be best suited for text. (Also, you have a face for radio.)

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