The Longreads Blog

Q&A with the man who created Mosaic and Netscape, and has since funded some of the biggest companies on the web:

The future was much easier to see if you were on a college campus. Remember, it was feast or famine in those days. Trying to do dialup was miserable. If you were a trained computer scientist and you put in a tremendous amount of effort, you could do it: You could go get a Netcom account, you could set up your own TCP/IP stack, you could get a 2,400-baud modem. But at the university, you were on the Internet in a way that was actually very modern even by today’s standards. At the time, we had a T3 line—45 megabits, which is actually still considered broadband. Sure, that was for the entire campus, and it cost them $35,000 a month! But we had an actual broadband experience. And it convinced me that everybody was going to want to be connected, to have that experience for themselves.

“The Man Who Makes the Future: Wired Icon Marc Andreessen.” — Chris Anderson, Wired

A call for justice for women in the Middle East. The writer, who was sexually assaulted by Egyptian police last year, says the revolutions have not addressed the plight of women:

Yes: They hate us. It must be said. 

Some may ask why I’m bringing this up now, at a time when the region has risen up, fueled not by the usual hatred of America and Israel but by a common demand for freedom. After all, shouldn’t everyone get basic rights first, before women demand special treatment? And what does gender, or for that matter, sex, have to do with the Arab Spring? But I’m not talking about sex hidden away in dark corners and closed bedrooms. An entire political and economic system — one that treats half of humanity like animals — must be destroyed along with the other more obvious tyrannies choking off the region from its future. Until the rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes, our revolution has not even begun.

“Why Do They Hate Us?” — Mona Eltahawy, Foreign Policy

See also: “Women: The Libyan Rebellion’s Secret Weapon.” — Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian

Featured: Tech/Science site BBC Future’s #longreads page. Story picks about Olympic doping, the Titanic’s anniversary, plus more.

Chris Chaney was a 33-year-old loner in Florida who decided to shake up his boredom by breaking into celebrities’ email accounts. Soon he discovered nude photos of Scarlett Johansson and other stars, and then the FBI came calling:

While perusing the e-mail of celebrity stylist Simone Harouche in early November 2010, he stumbled across photos of her client Christina Aguilera trying on outfits in a dressing room, wearing little more than silver pasties. Chaney found a random guy on a celebrity message board and sent him an e-mail telling him he knew ‘someone’ who had hacked pictures of Aguilera. Did he want to check them out?

Chaney freaked the moment he sent it. What the hell am I doing? he thought. He was using a phony e-mail address, but he didn’t know how to effectively cover his tracks. On December 8, a headline appeared on TMZ: ‘Christina Aguilera: My Private Sexy Pics Were Hacked.’ Aguilera’s rep told TMZ they were ‘attempting to determine the identity of the hackers and will pursue them aggressively.’

“The Man Who Hacked Hollywood.” — David Kushner, GQ

More Kushner: “The Hacker is Watching.” Jan. 15, 2012, GQ

The writer reflects on a 1987 tragedy that forever changed the lives of the sisters of Ole Miss’s Chi Omega sorority: 

In my mother’s house I keep a packet of newspaper stories, yellowed relics. And when I look at them I feel no time has passed. I am back in the Chi O house, living in the room above the front door, listening to girls come and go, drifting off for a nap as Lynn strums ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ on her guitar, as Michelle practices piano in the parlor off the front hall, as Chandler and Fig and Bryan and the other houseboys banter in baritone while setting up the dining room for dinner. I see Robin and Margaret lined up for the lunchtime salad bar minutes before they leave for Highway 6. And Margaret tucking her keys in her hiding place in the foyer, because she’d be right back.

‘We Thought the Sun Would Always Shine on Our Lives’ — Paige Williams, O, The Oprah Magazine

Stanford University, and its president John L. Hennessy, have a tight relationship with Silicon Valley, which has helped the university’s endowment grow to nearly $17 billion. A look at how those relationships are shaping what’s next:

John Hennessy’s experience in Silicon Valley proves that digital disruption is normal, and even desirable. It is commonly believed that traditional companies and services get disrupted because they are inefficient and costly. The publishing industry has suffered in recent years, the argument goes, because reading on screens is more convenient. Why wait in line at a store when there’s Amazon? Why pay for a travel agent when there’s Expedia? The same argument can be applied to online education. An online syllabus could reach many more students, and reduce tuition charges and eliminate room and board. Students in an online university could take any course whenever they wanted, and wouldn’t have to waste time bicycling to class.

“Get Rich U.” — Ken Auletta, The New Yorker

See also: “Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard.” — Nina Munk, Vanity Fair, Aug. 1, 2009

A man attempts to track down his middle school teacher and offer a long-overdue apology:

Only by chance was I curious enough about the subject line — ‘Customer Feedback’ — to open the email from a man named Larry Israelson. 

You published an item involving retired teacher James Atteberry and the CASA program. Mr. Atteberry was a teacher of mine in the early ’70s, and I wish to apologize to him for a regrettable incident that occurred when I was his student. Can you provide any contact information for him, or would you be willing to serve as an intermediary and deliver a message on my behalf? Thank you for your time, and I await your reply.

“A Teacher, a Student and a 39-Year-Long Lesson in Forgiveness.” — Tom Hallman Jr., The Oregonian

See also: “Could You Forgive the Man Who Shot You in the Face?” — Michael J. Mooney, D Magazine, Sept. 22, 2011

[Fiction] Excerpt from McEwan’s forthcoming novel Sweet Tooth. A young woman is introduced to the man who would recruit her to MI5: 

My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with ‘plume’), and forty years ago, in my final year at Cambridge, I was recruited by the British security service. In the early spring of 1972, when exams were only weeks away, I found a new boyfriend, a historian called Jeremy Mott. He was of a certain old-fashioned type—lanky, large-nosed, with an out-sized Adam’s apple. He was unkempt, clever in an understated way, and extremely polite. I’d noticed quite a few of his sort around. They all seemed to have descended from a single family and to have come from private schools in the North of England where they were issued with the same clothes.

“Hand on the Shoulder.” — Ian McEwan, The New Yorker

See more #fiction #longreads

Featured: Francesco Renga’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The Independent, The New Yorker, Grantland, plus more.

Coming Monday, May 14th:

Bloomberg Businessweek and Longreads present “Behind the Tech Longreads”: A night of storytelling featuring Felix Gillette, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Brad Stone, Ashlee Vance and editor Josh Tyrangiel.

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, Manhattan, 7 p.m., Free admission

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