I’ve noticed a product development ethos creep into writing in the last few years. Essays that are “produced” like a book or movie rather than merely written. It’s like people are thinking in terms of target market, focus groups, concept, design, development, execution, launch...
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I think one reason this bothers me is that my general approach is “quantity to get to quality” and that does not scale with high production values. I do have more “produced” essays going at breaking smart but its bare minimum. Partly parable of pottery class, partly lazy research
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To be clear, I don’t there’s any quality difference in the mean but there is one in the variance. Production effort narrows the distribution but doesn’t shift the mean. Something something fat tail too. Also new-yorkerization as in dated ledes etc.
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Thoughts sparked by this tweet this morninghttps://twitter.com/Jake_Wolff/status/1326193156086505481 …
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I don’t think I can work in this mode, but I’m interested in seeing how far others can take it. I think it has potential if people start putting rich, dynamic embedded content in it. Like wolfram’s computational essays. Calculators, dynamic sims etc. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2017/11/what-is-a-computational-essay/ …
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Takes a good deal more planning to pull such things off. Can’t just stream-of-consciousness wing it. I’ve only ever done one essay built around a sim. And that was an accident since I coded it up as a jokehttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/03/22/social-dark-matter-on-seeing-and-being-seen/ …
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I do like the
@RoamResearch take on this though which is more like a coding notebook with embedded calculations. Still a product ethos, but more tinkering prototypes than finishedShow this thread -
Feels like hardware acceleration in chips, where software functions get absorbed into specialty circuitry. Hardware = basic old-fashioned essay Software = dynamic thinking enabled by a piece of text Hardware acceleration = automate the thinking and put it in the text
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Example: Old-fashioned essay: a personality model that suggests an obvious typology that you informally apply Product-style essay: embed a personality test and maybe tweak the presentation based on responses
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End of conversation
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Isn’t that the inevitable result of creating this whole idea of a marketable personal brand and treating even essays as a way to get email subscribers to inevitably sell your “private writings” too?
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Like the gentleman driver of the 1950s who was gradually pushed out of the limelight by professional racecar drivers, the gentleman writer is being edged out by over-optimized, monetizing-focused marketers whose product is the printed words, not the thoughts behind them.
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