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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 29 Dec 2019
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      This is one of my “I’m probably the asshole here” opinions

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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Looks like I last did a review/summary myself in 2011. I think I just got bored of doing these even when they are inline with my projects. I don’t have the requisite community service mentality.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/category/bookreviews/page/2/ …

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Yeah definitely feel like an asshole posting this thread especially since I drafted off the benefits of writing about books back when there were far fewer people doing it and they had way more cachet than they do today.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      In 2009 nobody ever said of a book, “this should be a thread at best”. Even the fluffiest faddish business book was given benefit of doubt of having a decent essay’s worth of content to it. Books meant something beyond just being an intellectual calling card for “thought leaders”

      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      I think the book as a mainstream medium is possibly dead. Now new books are of the following types: 1. Personal brand calling card 2. Scholarly specialist things 3. B2B middleware for movies/TV, incidentally also read by nerds 4. Reactionary memberberries for waldenponders

      6 replies 3 retweets 51 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Tor Nelson

      Yep books as decor, though that’s always been the case to a degree https://twitter.com/ecceplusultra/status/1211515337595768833?s=21 …https://twitter.com/ecceplusultra/status/1211515337595768833 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Tor Nelson @ecceplusultra
      Replying to @vgr
      👆 books as decor
      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      I think all the paper-book supremacists gloating at the plateauing of ebooks are misreading what’s happened. It’s not that p-books are fighting back, it’s that blogs etc are undermining both now. The p-book resurgence is a transient domestic cozy reactionary thing. Doomed.

      4 replies 2 retweets 12 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Books need reinvention but I don’t think hypertext and stuff are relevant. Those are entirely different media. The post internet book will still be a serialized, ludic-immersive thing whose USP is making all the sequencing choices for the reader.

      2 replies 3 retweets 16 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      A lot more is possible within this definition than we think though. I’ll add: possibly the “book” will always have a specialized form factor and never quite be reducible to an app within a generic compute device. I prefer my e-ink kindle to the app or reading pdfs.

      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      I was asking about radio pre/post-TV (got no response) mainly to analogize to books https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1211408271514337281?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1211408271514337281 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Is there a good read about the differences between radio cultures before and after disruption by TV? Feel like we need a similar evolution in books pre/post social media.
      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Brady Dale

      Yeah stuff like this, while still respecting basic form: serialized and ludic immersion. It’s a book if you don’t ask the reader to ever choose their own adventure (that gimmick never really worked) https://twitter.com/bradydale/status/1211517549017477120?s=21 …https://twitter.com/BradyDale/status/1211517549017477120 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Brady DaleVerified account @BradyDale
      Replying to @vgr
      It would be cool if books expanded or contracted with the reader’s domain knowledge
      9:26 PM - 29 Dec 2019
      • 6 Likes
      • mutual jake 😇 Geoffrey Litt Crypto Nazgul Rahul Ramchandani 🎙 Piyush Maverick Tainguriya Customer Support🎙
      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer in Diamond Age remains a pretty decent vision. A single sequenced journey. It can adapt and morph to the reader’s progress, but not branch in open-ended ways.

          1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          Wonder if common-grounding is an essential feature of books. Should we expect those who’ve “read” a book in the future to share a certain common context? Even under customization/personalization? I think so. “Many roads to the top of a mountain, but the view is always the same.”

          3 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          I think I’ve convinced myself “hypertext book” is an ill-posed concept. Contradiction in terms. Successful hypertext is accessed in ways that drives self-directed divergence. Forcing author-directed convergence will either fail or not be hypertext.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          The dictionary or encyclopedia is a poor-fit marginal use of the book format but the canonical textual experience in hypertext. That says something. Notable that hypertext has eaten all dictionaries and encyclopedias but largely failed to touch long (> short story) fiction.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          Personal experience: not counting my blog/newsletter compilation ebooks, my first real book Tempo was composed directly in LaTeX out of a rich stream-of-consciousness fugue outline on a 5-hour flight, filling out a paper notebook. I *never* blog that way.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          The book I’m trying to write now, recently potted into Roam, is really fighting me. It wants to be an encyclopedia, not a serialized ludic narrative. We’ll see what comes out the other end of the Epic Struggle.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          A few video games seem more like books to me now than nominal books tortured out of online content. Serialized? Check Ludic-immersive? Check Common-grounding of finishers? Check Good recent example: Monument Valley. Or the Room trilogy. These are book-games.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          A few classic books, if written today, would have been written as blogs. Like Les Miserables with its digressions from the main Jean Valjean — Javert story. I read an abridged edition as a teenager that left out all the side blog posts within the book. Never read the full thing.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          Trying to define “future book” in a way that I actually want to write it. Something deeply depressing about the idea of writing a traditional book in 2020. It anti-excites me. Also seems more honest since my reading of books has also changed. I now “read” more like a shredder.

          2 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 29 Dec 2019
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          Unbundle and rebundle the book. Easier said than done.

          3 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 30 Dec 2019
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Brendan Schlagel

          Yep, this is the limitation of one-size-fits-all summaries/reviews, and reason I stopped doing them. The largest part of context is the reader and where they're trying to go. Unless that interests you or coincides with you/your direction, limited value.https://twitter.com/schlagetown/status/1211711797864083456 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Brendan Schlagel @schlagetown
          Replying to @vgr
          I think we need fewer reviews / analyses; more contextualization. Following the idea of the antilibrary: antireading; antireviews. Many interesting books defy summarization, or at least demand something more; writing & reading about them can be rewarding if approached obliquely.
          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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        13. End of conversation

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