Wilfred McClay: “I hear you, gentle reader, saying that surely I must be kidding. We need more profanity? Aren’t we already being inundated with it? … And that’s exactly the problem. Our curse currency has become grossly inflated and devalued. … When what once was salty loses its savor, it becomes worthy only to be trampled underfoot.” – The Hedgehog Review
Tag: Summer 2020
How Data Fueled The Progressive Era
Statistics in the Progressive Era were more than mere signs of a managerial government’s early efforts to sort and categorize its citizens. The emergence of statistical selves was not simply a rationalization of everyday life, a search for order (as Robert Wiebe taught a half century of historians to say).2 The reliance on statistical governance coincided with and complemented a pervasive revaluation of primal spontaneity and vitality, an effort to unleash hidden strength from an elusive inner self. The collectivization epitomized in the quantitative turn was historically compatible with radically individualist agendas for personal regeneration—what later generations would learn to call positive thinking. – Hedgehog Review
Nicholson Baker Surfs YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithms And Winds Up In Some Ugly Places
“We’re told that after the 2016 elections Google made adjustments to YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, so as not to lead impressionable gun-owning zealots frictionlessly down tunnels of paranoia. … Even so, it remains true today that the more dark, wiggy videos you consume, the darker and wiggier your playlist becomes, until you inhabit a so-called ‘filter bubble,’ while Google makes ad money off of your addictive radicalization.” – Columbia Journalism Review
What Happens To Literary Life In Isolation
The absence of a tactile literary culture—one that happens in real time rather than on a screen—meant an uncomfortable cultural silence. And yet, during early morning walks through an empty city in April, paying attention in a wholly new way, I became acutely aware of being surrounded by literature, of how it manifests on many of Washington’s streets in the places where writers once wrote and lived, their words etched in stone. – VQR
The Power Of Science And The Challenge Of Trust
Today, scientists are grappling with the problem of model uncertainty, as seen in areas like climate and medicine. These questions are increasingly challenging the basis of modern scientific knowledge itself, which is defined by a combination of mathematics and observation. – American Affairs Journal