[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gXQfcIniw8p3iX6eCSgrKCkQ9mR6Oq04"] Over the next few weeks I'll be posting the endorsements I get for my upcoming book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, due in January from Yale University Press. With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have … [Read more...]
Are Human Tastemakers Waging a Comeback?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Y8fDWKTQR4PySZdf0pqVQLolQa6bMrQS"] THE phrase "we love you people" may have a new resonance: Apple's purchase of Beats may mean Silicon Valley may be turning toward actual people as "curators" over the faceless algorithms it's been using. Years into a process by which your bookstore or record store clerk found himself made obsolete by an Amazon recommendation, this … [Read more...]
Gearing Up for Record Store Day, and Art “Flipping”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="8eZwNmRxYLLmX2m5vhxmxtoOeyErCIlW"] MUCH of my misspent youth was passed in record stores and bookstores, both as a customer and clerk, and I absorbed huge doses of enthusiasm, and I hope some knowledge, that would later help me as a scribe. So I'm always happy to read that record stores seem to be coming back, as this story timed to Record Store Day -- the annual … [Read more...]
Will Technology Eat Your Job?: The Second Machine Age
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="rH31sHcPNX2fJ8BUGdeIZ6rMJes54987"] THE honest answer to that question is, Well, maybe. Today I have a Daily Beast interview with Andrew McAfee, an MIT researcher and co-author of the new book The Second Machine Age. His previous book, Race Against the Machine, took a cautionary look at how digital technology, including artificial intelligence, was leading to levels … [Read more...]
Record Store Day 2011
TOMORROW, Saturday, is dedicated to an endangered species that had an important role in raising yours truly: the humble record shop. Record Store Day was launched in 2007 to recognize and help preserve independent shops, which have taken a serious beating from the economy, predatory chains and the music's shift online.The holiday includes various live events, sales, cookouts, and so on. (Check out … [Read more...]
National Record Store Day
TODAY is, they tell me, national record store day... it's hard not to be both excited and sadly nostalgic. i've been haunting record stores in every city and town i've ever lived in -- severna park maryland; middletown, ct; brighton, england; baltimore; chapel hill; new london/mystic, ct; LA -- and almost every place i've visited. okay, i'm a junkie.i loved newberry comics in boston, waterloo in … [Read more...]