I’ve been rereading [The Diamond Age](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age) and understanding a lot more about the “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” which plays a major role. So it was awesome to see that [some Pixar veterans have started to create something very similar for the iPad](http://www.fastcompany.com/3015973/innovation-agents/pixar-vets-unveil-a-genre-busting-ipad-talk-show-that-talks-back)…right down to the [ractors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Failure_of_artificial_intelligence):
> Speech engineers interpret the data daily, and alert writers to fresh answers. In one Fireside Chat Winston asks, “What is your favorite ball?” The staff came up with all the ball types they could think of, but in testing the app several kids replied “gumball.” Since that was not in the lineup, the writers concocted a quip to respond to “gumball” and added it to the database…
> So far, more than 3,000 lines have been recorded. The ToyTalk team expects to add fresh material to the app every week. And there’s also a full-time voice actor on staff to record the dialogue.
Something easily forgotten but remarkable when noticed–[we write more as a society today than ever before](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/how-successful-networks-nurture-good-ideas/all/). An excerpt from [Clive Thompson’s new book](http://smarterthanyouthink.net/):
> Every day, we collectively produce millions of books’ worth of writing. Globally we send 154.6 billion emails, more than 400 million tweets, and over 1 million blog posts and around 2 million blog comments on WordPress. On Facebook, we post about 16 billion words. Altogether, we compose some 3.6 trillion words every day on email and social media — the equivalent of 36 million books.* (The entire US Library of Congress, by comparison, holds around 23 million books.)
> And what makes this explosion truly remarkable is what came before: comparatively little. Before the Internet, most people rarely wrote for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college.
> One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. That’s why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again. – [Gabriel Garcia Marquez](http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez)
> This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just ‘What if’ – it’s ‘My God; what if’ – in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.
– [Philip K. Dick](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/136554-i-want-to-write-about-people-i-love-and-put)
> Fiction is the study of the human condition through the medium of interesting lies. – [Charlie Stross](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/spoilers.html)
>”Once upon a time.” Four words. I don’t need to say anything more, and yet you know at once what it is you’re about to hear. You may not know the precise contents. You may not recognize the specific characters. You may have little notion of the exact action that is about to unfold. But you are ready all the same to take on all of these unknowns, the uncertainties, the ambiguities. You are ready to succumb to the world of the story…
> First, there is that semblance of distance. We are not in the now, but rather in some place in the removed past…
> Distance is a psychologically powerful tool. It can allow us to process things that we would otherwise be unable to deal with—and I mean this in both a literal and a more metaphorical, emotional sense—and it frees up our mind in a way that immediacy does not.
> Second, there is the vagueness, the deliberate lack of specificity…that which scares us in real life—the lack of definitions, rules, clearly defined borders and boundaries—is not only unscary but entirely welcomed in the fairytale…I can indulge in abstraction and play, engage my curiosity and foster my creativity, and remain the whole time protected by that vague veneer of “once”.
[An insightful article and nice tribute to Maurice Sendak](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/05/08/the-power-of-once-upon-a-time-a-story-to-tame-the-wild-things/).
[Ken Burns talks about why he loves conflict, villans and complications](http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/05/ken-burns-on-story/257165/). A few choice quotes:
> My interest is always in complicating things.
> All story is manipulation.
> The kind of narrative I subscribe [to] trusts in the possibility that people could change.
> We do coalesce around stories that seem transcendent.
John Updike on why he writes:
> So writing is my sole remaining vice. It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. … Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.
For anyone impressed by [Groupon](http://www.groupon.com/san-francisco/)’s copywriting (today’s SF offer, “Faces act as gatekeepers for incoming food and outgoing laughter, giving them the power to leave our bodies half-starved or bloated with unreleased giggles.”) and the fact that they can turn out unique copy for hundreds of cities every day, check out [their public “voice guide”](https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_2g92x4scj&pli=1&ndplr=1), which gives tips on how to achieve “the Groupon voice”.
Strategies include “fake history”, “absurd images”, and “highly technical language”. Pretty much the opposite of what you’d do for strict usability, and also pretty awesome.
[Proust illuminates](http://www.bookofjoe.com/2007/04/reading_becomes_1.html) the first part of [my media diet](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3692) (creation/consumption balance) better than I did:
> “Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit it tends to substitute itself for it.”
([as mentioned before…](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=2630))