If not for founder Mark Zuckerberg’s stubborn streak, social-media pioneer Facebook might be just another part of a giant media or tech outfit today. Instead it’s a giant on its own, with close to 500 million users, some $20 billion in market value, and millions of investors eagerly awaiting an IPO. For his new book, […]
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Lessons of the Spill
Poised for dramatic expansion, high-tech offshore drilling was considered ultrasafe. Then came BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. What the company—and the industry—must do to bounce back
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3-D, 3-D, 3-D, in All Directions
In the midst of all this tech hoopla which seems to be gaining currency at high end as well as amateur levels, I have found the voice of the professional cinematographer to be curiously muted, even pensive. Admittedly, we are not a group who clamors for attention inside the media buzz whenever a new technology […]
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Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss?
The Internet was supposed to liberate artists and replace the traditional businesses that had been disrupted by digital distribution. Musician David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) says the math still isn’t working: I was like all of you. I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists. I still […]
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The Graphing Calculator Story
In the early 1990s, a contractor for Apple had his project cancelled. He then decided to “uncancel” it, and began sneaking into corporate headquarters to finish the job: I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Wired's Mat Honan
Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired’s Gadget Lab. Best story about a monkey that’s really about the role of government that’s really about nature’s place in the modern world that’s actually, maybe, really just about a monkey. “What’s a Monkey to Do in Tampa?” (Jon Mooallem, New York Times Magazine) This is the […]
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Longreads Best of 2012: Reyhan Harmanci
Reyhan Harmanci is deputy editor of Modern Farmer, a not-yet-launched publication devoted to issues of farming and food (and animals!). Picking these stories activated an obsessive part of my brain and I’m already regretting throwing the “best” around without spending a few months reading all of the Longreads of 2012. But there’s always 2013! Best […]
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Paul Ford: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010
Paul Ford was an editor at Harper’s Magazine; now he’s wandering around, looking at stuff and writing computer programs. *** Tony Judt, “Night,” New York Review of Books (January 14) This was the year of the dying critic. Most writers would do themselves, and their readers, a service by dying without all the self-elegies (“selfegies”?). […]
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The Best Longreads of 2010: Science, Medicine & Technology
The Best Longreads of 2010: Science, Medicine & Technology Third and final round in our “Best #longreads of 2010” collaboration with BrainPickings.org. Today: Science, Medicine & Tech—with stories from Amy Harmon, Andrew Rice, Jerome Groopman, Logan Ward, The Oil Drum, Lawrence Lessig, and more.
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Jobs smiled warmly as he told them he was going after their market. “He said we were a feature, not a product,” says Houston. Courteously, Jobs spent the next half hour waxing on over tea about his return to Apple, and why not to trust investors, as the duo—or more accurately, Houston, who plays Penn […]
