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Trademark Madness

January 04, 2011

There are not enough names to go around. This is a fact about our crowded, information-rich world that should be clear enough by now. I spend a certain amount of time exploring it in The Information—not enough names, catchphrases, abbreviations, or for that matter book titles (apologies again to Martin Amis). We’re supposed to be […]

Mandelbrot Farewell

December 22, 2010

My farewell essay about Benoit Mandelbrot appears this weekend in the Times Magazine’s year-end issue, The Lives They Lived. It’s here: “Fractal Vision.”

All the Words in All the Books

December 17, 2010

A few years ago I was involved in the secret negotiations with Google over the lawsuit by authors who objected to the company’s unauthorized copying of our books onto their servers. (We reached a good settlement, pleasing all sides, but there have been some objections, and court approval remains in doubt.) As everyone recognized, Google […]

Chaos: the e-book (finally)

December 15, 2010

I’m working with Open Road (what a talented bunch!) to produce a long overdue e-book of Chaos. It’s going to have what seems to be called in the biz “enhanced content”—which is to say, videos, animations, graphics in motion. Pendulums will swing and strange attractors will attract. Yet it will still be a book. I […]

What makes what? Help, please.

December 12, 2010

Samuel Butler said (1877), A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg. I have quite a bit to say about this in The Information. The subject, as you might guess, is genes. And then memes. There have been some witty variations on this theme. One of my personal favorites is Daniel Dennett’s […]

The very word

December 09, 2010

The word “information” has grown urgent and problematic—a signpost seen everywhere, freighted with new meaning and import. We hardly need the lexicographers of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell us that, but after all, this is what they live for. It is a word, they tell us, “exhibiting significant linguistic productivity,” a word that “both reflects and […]

The Humiliation of Mr. Martin

December 08, 2010

An important lesson of l’Affaire Steve Martin bears mentioning, I think. (In case you haven’t followed it, his on-stage conversation with Deborah Solomon at the 92nd Street Y, largely about the world of art, as depicted in his new novel, An Object of Beauty, was interrupted in real time by a staffer with a note […]

What am I doing?

November 29, 2010

I’m not sure yet. Perhaps I’m blogging. I’ve had a web site here, a “home page,” since the dawn of time. (By “dawn of time” I mean of course the early 1990s. Do I have to defend that? The starting line of history varies for different media. [By “medium” I mean communications channel.] Different media […]

Contact

Find me in the open social web (fediverse; Mastodon): @gleick@mas.to

Mastodon

Literary agent:
Michael Carlisle
at Inkwell Management,
521 Fifth Ave.,
New York 10175.

Or send a private message.