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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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      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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    2. 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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    3. 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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    4. 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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    5. 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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    6. 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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    7. 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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    8. 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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    9. 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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    10. 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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      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.
      10:17 AM - 30 Dec 2019
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      • David Wood Maynard Handley Rahul Ramchandani Brendan Schlagel QC Olaf Alex Bandeauxx.
      2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Brendan Schlagel‏ @schlagetown 30 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Good point, I think a cool frame could be writing about books w/ the goal of situating their historical / cultural relevance & helping readers decide how / in what contexts it's worth diving deeper. Go more meta. And more personalized, if possible, even better.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Brendan Schlagel‏ @schlagetown 30 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @schlagetown @vgr

          Agree largest part of context is the reader, but the reader doesn't always know where they're trying to go. Often hard to articulate why I read stuff! A good review (antireview, w/e) ideally can help reveal some unknown unknown / adjacent possible interest / direction to explore

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Gunther Boogle‏ @GuntherBoogle 30 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Choose Your Own Adventure books. Limited edges to diverge and all converge on one or two end nodes.

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