tecznotes

Two of my favorite New Yorker writers (the others are Anthony Lane and Adam Gopnik) are currently engaged in a weeklong conversation about their respective books, Blink and The Wisdom Of Crowds. I don't have the attention span to follow this one blow-by-blow, but I plan to pay close attention when they're done.

From worldchanging:

...a public conversation/debate between James "Wisdom of Crowds" Surowiecki and Malcolm "The Tipping Point"/"Blink" Gladwell is still pretty interesting, at least for those of us interested in social networks, framing and memes, group behavior, and cultural change. Surowiecki and Gladwell are two of the best-known social observers around right now, and they both make trenchant observations apt to trigger cascading aha! moments for readers

It's immensely gratifying to have seen the New Yorker explode with vitality and significance since I started subscribing five years ago. When I read my parents' issues as a child, I generally checked only the cartoons, and had a fairly strong view of the magazine as a bit of a wash-up.

I still hate the fiction.