The Memex Method | Hacker News Reader

The Memex Method

doctorow.medium.com

82 pointsrbanffy17 comments

I am quite puzzled about Cory Doctorow of all people using a closed platform like Medium.

Boy's gotta eat

>Now, I've added another channel: Medium, where I'm part of a group of paid writers who contribute a mix of original material that's exclusive to the platform and syndicated material from elsewhere.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/05/clarkes-third-law/#indist...

Boingboing used to be part of my daily visits when I was making my rounds through the blogosphere a dozen years ago.

It's sad to see that this once great blog has become a shadow of its former self.

I find Doctorow publishing on Medium almost heart breaking.

> I find Doctorow publishing on Medium almost heart breaking

Medium is a surefire way to get noticed with little effort. Yes, maybe Cory doesn't need 'attention as a default' since he has reach on Twitter and BoingBoing and can advertise himself on those platforms easily, but for regular Joe Blogs, Medium is a way to get your writing noticed without having to write clickbait-ey or sensationalist articles, or coerce 'influencer' type people to spread your link around. Should that mean Cory is not allowed to post on Medium? Hardly.

Can anyone post a summary? Obnoxious ID/paywall obscures almost the entirety of the article.

It's a bit hard to do so as the article is all over the place. Aside from laying out the overall history of blogging, author tells how blogging enhances his writing.

A couple of quotes:

> The availability of a deep, digital, searchable, published and public archive of my thoughts turns habits that would otherwise be time-wasters — or even harmful — into something valuable.

> Blogging isn’t just a way to organize your research — it’s a way to do research for a book or essay or story or speech you don’t even know you want to write yet. It’s a way to discover what your future books and essays and stories and speeches will be about.

The entire article: https://pastebin.com/c128TpGw

Thanks.

Delete your cookies for medium. Or even better, don't allow the website to set any and you should be able to read most content there. Otherwise a private session could also help?

Disabling Javascript is a very easy way to deal with Medium. uBlock Origin is your friend.

I call this "progressive degradation" (have a perfect baseline, and degrade it with more advanced technology). [1,2,3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898947

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874802

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108022

Here's my attempt.

Brand building is bullshit, the real benefit for authors in regular blogging is to focus ideas to the point where your next book / article / essay is already clear in your mind. It also works as research into a topic. Private blogging is more like a log file, public blogging requires more discipline. A memex machine was designed to expand memories, a set of searchable private and public blog / text files works the same. The author has done this all his life and was able to produce a 1500 word essay with over 20 references in an hour.

Thanks.

Seems kind of ironic to me that Doctorow would publish on Medium.

It does seem contrary to the general principles he fights for. He just started it this month https://doctorow.medium.com/about

Some of what is on this blog is also available on https://pluralistic.net/, but not this particular piece, which was published 6 days ago. Not sure why.

It's genuine though https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1393620868597620738?s=20

Considering he also published a whole "book" there[0], I think there's a financial incentive.

[0] https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capit...

https://archive.is/m9dty

Allowing only first party CSS/images works for me, which is my default mode anyhow.

> Can anyone post a summary? Obnoxious ID/paywall obscures almost the entirety of the article.

First paragraph:

> I’ve been a blogger for a little more than 20 years and in that time I’ve written a little more than 20 books: novels for adults; novels for teens; short story collections; essay collections; graphic novels for adults, highschoolers and middle-schoolers; a picture-book for small children, and book-length nonfiction on various subjects. I’ve written and delivered some hundreds of speeches as well, for several kinds of technical and non-technical audience, as well as for young kids and teens.

https://www.outline.com/764w9T

Reply on news.ycombinator.com