Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
February 24, 2017
In a reckless moment I bought a pair of AirPods, and after using them for a couple of weeks, here are my thoughts: 1) If the sound quality of my set of Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones is a 9, and that of the wired earbuds that came with my iPhone is a 4, then the AirPods’ sound is roughly a 5. 2) It’s really nice to be able to go to...
February 22, 2017
A preliminary note before I get down to work. First, though these posts on biblical building are among the least-read in the history of Text Patterns, they’ve been getting some good comments, and at least two of those comments are causing me to reconsider, or at least to nuance, some of my argument: see Chaka’s comment here...
February 21, 2017
Some of you will have discovered my previous post exhorting you to abandon Twitter by finding a link to it on Twitter (possibly a link posted by me). I have scripts set up to send various things I do online to Twitter because by using such scripts (a) I don’t have to visit Twitter to announce what I’ve posted and (b) I...
February 21, 2017
This morning, for the first time in a few weeks, I checked Twitter. I thought I should see if anyone had sent me a direct message, or if there was some reply I should be aware of. No and no, thanks be to God. But I took a look around while I was there, and saw that a friend of mine had written a post that was getting a good deal of...
February 20, 2017
Yuval Harari: Recently I went with my nephew to hunt Pokémon. We were walking down the street and a bunch of kids approached us. They were also hunting Pokemon. My nephew and these children got into a bit of a fight because they were trying to capture the same invisible creatures. It seemed strange to me. But these Pokémon were very...
February 17, 2017
February 17, 2017
Let us reflect further on the call and assignment of Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur in Exodus 31: We are told that he will “devise artistic designs,” “devise plans,” or, in the irresistible formulation of King James’s translators, “devise cunning works.” Josipovici again: The Hebrew phrase for ‘to devise cunning works’...
February 16, 2017
In Exodus 31 there’s a curious passage in which the Lord describes to Moses the artist, or artisan, or craftsman, whom He has chosen to oversee the building of the Tabernacle: “See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and...
February 15, 2017
In reflecting further on the story of how and why Solomon built the Temple, I want to cite Gabriel Josipovici again, because without being cynical he is very skilled at teasing out some of the oddities of this narrative. Like most modern readers, including myself, Josipovici is interested in human motives; but as Erich Auerbach famously...
February 14, 2017
The reign of King David of Israel was highly successful, but also ceaselessly beset by conflicts. Whenever he had a break from fighting the surrounding nations, David had to reckon with internal conflict among members of his family and his court. He seems to have lurched from one crisis to another throughout the whole of his forty-year...