Psychic Master Style Manual
1. I am appalled by this A&E show called Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. The show’s shtick is that the grown ups–a psychic and a therapist it looks like–help psychic children “use their powers for good,” i.e. shoving scared little girls into dark rooms and expecting them to keep their wits about them. God, scary kids make for good tv. You know that’s what the show’s creators said sitting around that well-lit Hollywood brainstorming table.
2. I’m interested in this book: The Master Switch by Tim Wu. Here’s what Very Short List has to say about it:
In his new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu argues that our increasing dependence on a single network (the internet) makes us more and more vulnerable to private interests bent on controlling the flow of information.
Much of the book is taken up with deep-focus histories of radio, telephone, film and television: Wu coins a Gladwellian phrase—”the Cycle”—to describe the trend toward media consolidation in each industry, and wonders how far away we really are from an internet that’s totally under corporate control. “Every other invention of its kind has had its period of openness, only to become the basis of yet another information empire,” he writes. “Is the internet really different?”