I thought I was going to hate it and then lose my admiration for Smith as a writer. But that didn’t happen. Though she draws from Jaron Lanier, who she mistakenly calls as an early innovator of the Internet (he’s really an innovator of virtual reality), she doesn’t really import his reactionary rhetoric wholesale. She’s rather fair and this piece is not really meditation on Facebook, Gen Y, or anything like that but more so of her own aging.
A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment. By Philipp Blom. Basic Books; 384 pages; $29.95. To be published in Britain in March by Weidenfeld & Nicolson as “Wicked Company: Freethinkers and Friendship in Pre-Revolutionary Paris”; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, buy from Amazon.co.uk
ATHEISM is a hot topic. In recent years writers from Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have penned popular tracts advancing the cause of godlessness. But, as the Bible reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. Philipp Blom’s latest book tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul. Echoing ancient thinkers such as Democritus and Lucretius, they held ideas that were to prove too revolutionary even for a revolutionary age.
It is the story of the scandalous Paris salon run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach, a philosophical playground for many of the greatest thinkers of the age. Its members included Denis Diderot (most famous as the editor of the original encyclopedia, but, Mr Blom argues, an important thinker in his own right), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of romanticism, and the baron himself; even David Hume, a famous Scottish empiricist, paid the occasional visit.
A philosophy grew up around the baron’s generously stocked table that denied religious revelation and shunned Christian morality, embracing instead the primal passions (the fundamental motives, said the philosophes, for human behaviour) and cool reason (which could direct the passions, but never stand against them). They dreamt of a Utopia built on pleasure-seeking, rationality and empathy. Their ideal nation would leave no room for what they saw as the twisted ethical code of Christianity, which they argued prized suffering and destructive self-repression.
Not only was their thinking radical, but expressing it was dangerous. Diderot was imprisoned for his writings, an experience, Mr Blom argues, that left him too scared to lay out his philosophy plainly, instead disguising it within numerous plays, novels and letters. Baron d’Holbach published most of his works under pseudonyms, which helped to keep him safe but also condemned him to centuries of philosophical obscurity (except in the officially godless Soviet Union). Even when the French revolution finally came, its self-appointed guardians had no place for the philosophy of the true radicals. For Maximilien Robespierre, chief architect of the reign of terror that followed the revolution, God and religion were far too useful in keeping the population in line.
Mr Blom’s book is part biography and part polemic. He sketches the early lives of Diderot, Holbach, Rousseau and other players in the drama, and describes the philosophy they hammered out. It is also an iconoclastic rebuttal of what he describes as the “official” history of the Enlightenment, the sort of history that he finds “cut in stone” on a visit to the Paris Panthéon. There the bodies of Voltaire and Rousseau were laid to rest with the blessing of the French state. Neither deserved it, suggests Mr Blom.
Voltaire, he insists, was a milquetoast careerist, too concerned with his own reputation and his comfortable life to say anything truly unsettling. Rousseau he finds even worse. By denigrating reason, celebrating impulse and advocating repression and tyranny in the name of a loosely defined “general will”, Rousseau’s thinking, argues Mr Blom, was actively maleficent (and, unsurprisingly, venerated by Robespierre). It is a tragedy of history, the author concludes, that Voltaire and Rousseau won the battle of ideas, whereas Diderot was reduced to the rank of editor of the encyclopedia, and Holbach was forgotten utterly.
Even today, and even in secular western Europe, the bald and confident atheism and materialism of Diderot and Holbach seems mildly shocking. We still cling stubbornly to the idea of an animating soul, a spiritual ghost in the biological machine. For Mr Blom, the modern, supposedly secular world has merely dressed up the “perverse” morality of Christianity in new and better camouflaged ways. We still hate our bodies, he says, still venerate suffering and distrust pleasure.
This is the message of Mr Blom’s book, hinted at but left unstated until the closing chapters. He believes the Enlightenment is incomplete, betrayed by its self-appointed guardians. Despite all the scientific advances of the past two centuries, magical thinking and the cultural inheritance of Christianity remain endemic.
I am with my congregants on a Jewish study tour of Morocco following “the footsteps of Maimonides.” There in the old city of Fes is the Kairaouine Mosque, constructed in 857 C.E. and connected to what might be the oldest ongoing university in the world. Maimonides was a student there. In some ways, the city hasn’t changed since his time. Donkeys still carry heavy loads of fabric on their backs through the narrow ancient streets just the way they did when he lived here. But when you peer into the mosque, you can see the same poster that you see as you enter our synagogue: a picture of a cell phone with a line drawn through it. In the mosque, the Arabic words on the sign can be roughly translated as: “Please turn off your cell phones. Talk to God instead.”
Some things never seem to change and are common the world over. People still gather for prayer. Imams, priests and rabbis give sermons. We want people to pay attention. How do we help people pay attention?
Sometimes we take risks, do something that might even be slightly transgressive. Consider for example these recent High Holy Days in our congregation, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, a large, almost 75-year-old Reform congregation in the middle of Beverly Hills. The opening words of my Rosh Hashana sermon, as I took my cell phone out of the pocket of my white robe, were: “Please do not turn off your cell phone.”
There was stunned silence, then nervous laughter. “Yes, you heard me. Please do not turn off your cell phones. In fact, please take them out now. And if you have a Facebook or Twitter account, please log on.”
The theme of all of our High Holy Day messages related to the existential question posed by God to the prophet Elijah in the Book of Judges: “What are you doing here?” “What are you doing here,” we asked our congregants. “What are you doing here in the synagogue and here at this very moment in your life?”
So I gave the congregation an assignment right there in synagogue: “Please post your answer to the question ‘What are you doing here?’ in 140 characters or less.”
In 140 characters. Characters, not words.
Many of them did, and the answers, because they were so short perhaps, were especially moving.
“I am in Temple Emanuel for Rosh Hashanah services sitting next to my adult children thinking about my own parents.” (111 characters.)
“I am letting beautiful music wash over me and feeling a connection with Jews around the world.” (91 characters)
“I am thinking about last year… not an easy year… financial challenges, health scares…I’m hoping this year will be better.” (117 characters)
“I am looking for balance in my life. ( 36 characters.)
“I am trying to connect my soul to something deeper than just myself.” (68 characters.)
Existential questions probably don’t change. But the ways we challenge people to think about them do change over time. And new technology gives us new tools.
My colleague Rabbi Jonathan Aaron also took risks with technology for one of his sermons. He used a PowerPoint presentation to encourage people to think about what it means to be “here.” It opened with an image of the chairs in our sanctuary, and then of the sanctuary building. Then the picture expanded to the city of Beverly Hills, then to the state of California. In each subsequent image the camera zoomed further and further away until eventually we saw the picture of the universe from the Hubble space craft.
It was as though we were seeing the universe through God’s eyes, as it were. Suddenly everything looked different, including our own personal dramas that often keep us stuck in constricted places and keep us from seeing the bigger picture.
The Biblical story describes how Elijah discovered that bigger perspective not in an earthquake and not in a fire, but rather in a still small voice. Our congregation got a glimpse of it through PowerPoint, Facebook and Twitter.
The important questions never change. But new technology can help us pay attention — and respond — in different ways.
The way that this is written makes me think that it really wants to tell the story like “The Social Network” and “The Accidental Billionaires,” the book upon which it is based: there’s a genius/misanthrope at heart. In this case, it’s Evan Williams.
Soon, Gawker will no longer be a blog. The same goes for other sites in the Gawker network—Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, et al. There won’t be any change in their editorial missions: Gawker won’t drop its gossipy tone, Gizmodo will never hesitate to tell you about the secret iPhone it found in a bar, and Lifehacker will continue to offer tips on how to turn your PC into a Mac. The difference is that when these sites publish their scoops, they won’t be doing so in a “blog” format—that is, as a reverse-chronological, scrollable index of posts. Instead, Gawker and co. will transform into something more akin to conventional Web magazines.
To see what Gawker and its sisters will look like, replace the www in the URL with beta—e.g., beta.gawker.com. The front page will be dominated by a large image and headline from the site’s most popular post, and a list of other headlines will sit along the right side. You’ll be able to navigate the entire site at a glance, no scrolling required.
While this might sound like a small change, Gawker is often credited with legitimizing blogging as journalism. If Gawker is not, technically, a “blog,” then what is? Gawker honcho Nick Denton seems to wonder the same thing; in a recent New Yorker profile, he says that the redesign will “probably be seen as the end of the blog.”
Not so fast, Nick! While Gawker is dropping the blog format, sites of magazines like Wired and The Atlantic are embracing it. (At both outlets, all articles, other than those that first appeared in print, are published in a blog-like format.) Or check out Newsweek, whose home page lists headlines and snippets in reverse-chronological order, just like at your friend’s Blogger site.
The design shifts—with blogs looking more like magazines, and magazines looking more like blogs—aren’t just superficial. These changes in presentation are collapsing all distinctions between “blog posts” and “articles.” Over the last few days I contacted various bloggers and editors at big sites around the Web to ask how they define each term. The answers I got were surprisingly diverse—while each of these organizations has its own rules for what it calls a “blog post” and an “article,” the rules aren’t at all consistent across newsrooms. What’s more, the lines are blurring—blog posts are looking more like articles, and articles are looking more like blog posts.
So what’s the difference—what’s a blog post, what’s an article, and does it make any difference vis-à-vis how you navigate the Web? “I say this with all possible deference: Who cares?” wrote Joel Johnson, the Gizmodo blogger, when I approached him with such questions. Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything, a history of blogging, echoes this point: “Just as journalists think readers have a deep awareness of distinctions like ‘hard news piece’ vs. ‘feature’ vs. ‘news analysis,’ we think they understand or care about the line between ‘article’ and ‘blog post.’ But they’re just reading what we’re writing for them and responding. It’s our hang-up, not theirs.”
Still, to the reporters and editors who produce these pieces, these labels often carry great weight. Writers online are sensitive to old, cheap stereotypes regarding their professionalism—”young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting,” as Andrew Marr, the former political director of the BBC put it recently. While blogs aren’t treated so dismissively these days, perceived misuse of the terms “blog post” and “article” can still inflame journalistic class consciousness. The other day, the New York Times‘ David Brooks referred admiringly to Nathan Heller’s Slate article about The Social Network. But Brooks didn’t call Heller’s piece an “article.” Instead, he pointed to Heller’s “intelligent blog post.” Is it possible that the Times columnist used “blog post” as a subtle denigration—a way to downplay the fact that Heller had made Brooks’ argument first?
I’m going to give Brooks the benefit of the doubt and say probably not. (I wasn’t able to reach him for comment.) A lot of times this sort of confusion carries no greater meaning. Readers often mistake my blog posts for articles and vice versa; “Farhad Manjoo is the worst blogger at Slate!” is not an unusual comment in these pages. (I’m the worst columnist, thank you very much.)
Still, I heard from other media folks who consider “blog post” to be insulting terminology in certain circumstances. Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel (she stepped down from the editorship this past June), says that she sorts posts on the site into two mental categories. Pieces that are primarily “reactions to something that already existed in the media or on the Internet”—the bulk of Jezebel content in its early days—are “blog posts.” But Jezebel also publishes many essays that are not riffs on outside material. These weightier, original pieces aren’t set off in any special graphical way on the site, but Holmes still thinks of them as articles, not blog posts.
Often, Holmes says, readers and others in the media would refer to these longer stories as “blog posts,” and that term didn’t sit well with her. Holmes cites a widely read piece last June by Irin Carmon on why female staffers of The Daily Show felt “marginalized” on the set. “If someone would have referred to that story as a ‘blog post,’ I would have been annoyed,” Holmes says. “I wouldn’t necessarily have been annoyed enough to say something, but I would have grumbled about it to Irin, because it would have lessened the work she did.” She adds that she wishes it weren’t this way: “Blog posts tend to be underrated. ‘Blog’ shouldn’t be a pejorative. But the word always seemed to be dismissive, especially among old-school media types.”
The anxiety over what to call “writing that lives on the Web” stems in part from changes in publishing technology. Over the last few years many online magazines and newspapers have ditched their lumbering, expensive “content management systems” for quicker, more flexible blogging software. The fact that you use blogging software, though, doesn’t mean that you consider yourself a blog. Bob Cohn, the editorial director of Atlantic Digital, says that he calls everything on his site a “post.” But Evan Hansen, executive editor of Wired.com, says that he doesn’t use “blog post” to refer to most of the pieces on Danger Room, Epicenter, and Threat Level—sections of Wired.com that are labeled as “blogs” on the home page. Because these stories are reported and edited, he thinks they’re articles—even though to all of us, they look like blog posts.
If all blog posts are morphing into articles, and all articles are morphing into blog posts, you might wonder which form is winning out. The question is particularly interesting considering the impending death of print. At some point in the future, date TBD, the New York Times will stop printing a newspaper. What will we call it then? Will stories on its site be “blog posts”?
I doubt it. I’d venture that Gawker’s redesign is a harbinger of a coming shift. Even though tradition-laden outfits like The Atlantic have adopted the blogging format, these blogs aren’t the kind of DIY ventures that we might’ve seen as recently as five years ago. Nearly all journalistic blogs—even Gawker’s—are thoroughly professional. They engage in reporting, they’ve got layers of editors, and they’re aimed at satisfying a target audience in order to gain traffic. They’re called blogs, but they’re really trafficking in articles.
Scott Rosenberg points out that this has little bearing on whether “blogs” remain a popular feature on the Internet; lots of ordinary, nonmedia people will continue to blog as a “labor of love.” That may be true, but we’re still in the midst of an important shift in the way the news business works. When I asked Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds how he defines blogging, he said the most important thing was “the lack of an institutional voice.” Whatever software it uses, he added, “I don’t think the NYT will ever really be a blog, in that sense.”
I think Manjoo is scratching the surface of something important here. The categorical distinctions between what is an article and what is a blog post are slowly eroding. Perhaps the early theorists of the Internet who had a literary bent can finally feel at ease, as their emphasis of textuality and inter-textuality, have come to fruition in the demise of enclosed genres of writing on the Web. (See the work of George Landow in this regard.)
However, what Manjoo doesn’t speak to is the backend. His article (or is it post?) is written largely from the perspective of the reader. But the operative question for me is: what are these sites, such as the Gawker Media sites as well as The Atlantic blogs, using on the backend? Are they all running custom content management systems? Are they using WordPress? If they are using the latter but wish to call their individual instances of writing “articles” not “posts” all of a sudden, well what’s the point of respecting such an explanation?
But the new project will not include a big gaming element, despite previous reports, said a person who has worked on the products.
“Google’s a pretty serious place,” Mr. Schmidt said. “It’s hard to see how we could end up as becoming a significant gaming or entertainment source. It’s much more likely that we would become an infrastructure for those sorts of things.”
Whatever Google does, its officials said, it would not build a Facebook reproduction that requires users to re-enter all their personal and social data. “I think that there is social networking fatigue,” Mr. Horowitz said.
The stakes are high, because people increasingly go to friends on other sites, like Yelp, Facebook or Twitter, with their search questions. For example, Ms. Li of the research firm recently asked her Twitter friends where to shop for clothes for her middle schooler and got answers from people who know her and her child.
“In the past I could have gone to Google and that would have been a huge advertising opportunity for Gap or American Eagle, but Google never had a chance to see my intention,” she said.
The potential for social information reaches beyond search. Facebook’s most popular feature is photo sharing and tagging friends in pictures. Picasa, Google’s photo-sharing service, is not nearly as social.
The last paragraph is key. How could they possibly try to compete against the “folksonomy” of Flickr and Facebook now?
I’m not so sure Google is fit to “go social” in any regard. As Schmidt is quoted in this article saying, it may be that Google needs to be the infrastructure for games and social software. For them to go and create features seems to me, taking into consideration their past blunders, a bit of a stretch, even for Google.
