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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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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here is a very thorough review of this kind of article-with-calculators production (and consumption)https://distill.pub/2020/communicating-with-interactive-articles/ …
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