Cyborg Anniversary

September marked the 50th birthday of the term "cyborg." Who knew? I certainly didn't, until I saw this post at the Atlantic.

More interesting than that story, though, is the larger project of which it's a part:

50 Posts About Cyborgs

It is what it sounds like. The thinkers who spent September writing in honor of cyborgs range from the Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal to Ryan North, founder of Dinosaur Comics. It should provide food for thought for quite a while, and from all ideological camps: a quick skim shows opinions ranging from "eek-stop-the-machines" to "we-are-all-cyborgs-now." Happy reading.

P.S.--In addition to being the title of this post, "Cyborg Anniversary" would be a good name for a band.

How to Kill Your Own Blog

If my old blog taught me anything, it was that the quickest route to blog suicide is lengthy, essayistic posts. I didn’t like the way writing works on the Internet—I still don’t—and I wanted so badly to write micro-essays on a blog.

The thing is, no one has the time or will to read that kind of thing. There were always a few exceptions…but overall, I think it was a failed experiment. The blogs I most admired had long posts like the kind I wrote—and I discovered that I “admired” them, but I never had time to read them. I was always “saving them for later.” I then started “saving for later” my own posts, which always required more and more time, because I was oh-so-afraid of putting things out there that weren’t top notch. That is how a blog dies.

Here’s to quick cultural reflections, and quick personal reactions. Welcome to Nifty Rictus.