Arguing is instead of sex.

— E. L. Doctorow: “Edgemont Drive” : The New Yorker (via Instapaper)

We’ve always skimmed newspapers more than we’ve read them, and we routinely run our eyes over books and magazines to get the gist of a piece of writing and decide whether it warrants more thorough reading. The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the Net’s treasures, we are blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture

— The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains (via Instapaper)

Yes, I know you’re a master of the web, that you’ve visited every website written in English, that you’ve been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny. But what have you shipped? What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world? Go, do that.

— Seth’s Blog

She spotted a tiger costume, complete with whiskered hood, hanging next to an orange sari. “Look at that tiger!” Maya said. “I could wear that at the photo shoot tomorrow!” She paused and considered the implications of dressing up as a tiger. “It’s probably too much,” she said finally. “It might seem like I was making a joke.

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Lynn Hirschberg ends her NYT article about MIA’s confused, contradictory politics brilliantly.

M.I.A.’s Agitprop Pop - NYTimes.com

(via Instapaper)

Post-Google I/O, there’s not much room left to see iPhone-vs.-Android as anything other than an all-out war. What we’ve got here is a good old-fashioned epic rivalry.

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It’s on.

Daring Fireball: Post-I/O Thoughts