“In his column, Manjoo goes on to call out virtual reality for being ‘a lonely, anti-social affair’—but, hey, isn’t that what reading a novel used to be? I mean, before we figured out how to make books ping and arouse competitive instincts by flagging favorite passages of readers who got there before we did. (I don’t mean to harp on Farhad Manjoo or to denigrate his excellent work; his reticence is shared by others in both legacy and new media cautioning against VR.)” It looks like VR is in desperate need of good storytellers.
Virtual Fictitious Reality
Twitter Bird Flu
Hypochondriacs rejoice! A team of scientists from the University of Rochester is working on a “machine-based algorithm” in the same vein as Google Flu Trends—but this time based on Twitter and smart phone data—to predict, with about 90% accuracy, when you’ll next get sick.
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Go Cardinals?
How’s your NCAA bracket doing? Busted? Well, maybe you should’ve picked your teams based on which ones turn the highest profit. The Atlantic analyzed the financial data and, voilà, their bracket correctly predicted nine of the teams in the Sweet Sixteen.
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Wallace Shawn Interviewed
Wallace Shawn, one of The Millions’ favorite humans, interviewed at Splice Today.
Conversations and Connections
Conversations and Connections is a Philadelphia conference offering editors, writers and publishers a chance to meet one another in a “comfortable, congenial environment.” The full day’s events are organized by Barrelhouse, and this year’s keynote speaker is The Odds author Stewart O’Nan.
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The Restaurant Model of Medicine
“Doctors may be tempted to give patients what we want, even when it is not good for us.” Guernica has an excerpt from Eula Biss’s forthcoming On Immunity: An Innoculation, which we featured in our book preview.
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Outraged over Outrage
When did Twitter turn into a place of public shame, outrage, and apology? Alexander Chee examines the changing culture in an essay for Dame Magazine. “Oh, Internet, place of the ultimate writerly paradox, where things you write quickly for little or no money last forever.” Our own Mark O’Connell explored something similar in his New Yorker essay on the public humiliation of regrettable tweets.
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Julie Powell at Powell’s
The Julie Powell interview at Powell’s — on butchery and infidelity and self-disclosure.