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" You can't think of technology as separate from all of our human drama anymore. "
Robin Sloan
Think
Drama
You
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" When we talk about novels, we don't often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination. "
Robin Sloan
Imagination
Moral
You
" On the Twitter media team, we believe that tweets drive TV tune-in. "
Robin Sloan
TV
Believe
Twitter
" Prediction just means you saw where the world might be going: ho-hum. Influence, though - ah. Influence, direct and acknowledged, means you actually steered the world, even if only a tiny bit. "
Robin Sloan
Just
You
World
" When I'm using the Internet, I have 25 tabs open, and even if somebody sends me... something interesting, odds are I'll forget about it, or it'll get kind of lost in the shuffle. "
Robin Sloan
Me
Forget
Interesting
" Print books have an amazing superpower because they don't disappear when you're done with them. Books on the shelf remind you that they exist. "
Robin Sloan
Disappear
Amazing
Books
" If I look into my past, I was definitely into inventors. I was into stories of Edison and Tesla and da Vinci and all these guys making stuff in their garage. "
Robin Sloan
Stuff
Stories
Garage
" There's just no escaping it: The half-life of media on the Internet is super short. Tweets flow and fade; pages that look great today will be gone or, at best, riddled with broken links and outmoded code in five years, tops. "
Robin Sloan
Best
Today
Broken
" I liked the sort of YA classics. I loved 'The Chronicles of Narnia.' I loved 'The Chronicles of Prydain' by Lloyd Alexander, who is amazing. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in. "
Robin Sloan
Loved
Amazing
Classics
" I think I'm one of those people that kind of thinks everybody's got an identity, and maybe that's the core of their personality. But I think we change enough over the years that it's like a succession of different people. "
Robin Sloan
People
Change
Personality
" I want to learn to weld. "
Robin Sloan
Want
Learn
" Books and technology are braided together and always have been. "
Robin Sloan
Together
Always
Books
" Doing research for 'Penumbra,' I read quite a bit about the early history of printing, and the more I did, the more it sounded like... the Internet today. There was crazy competition and upheaval; there were constant arguments about new techniques, new materials, new machines; and, of course, there were fortunes to be made. "
Robin Sloan
Crazy
Today
New
" When you do something a little bit extreme or weird, it helps make it more interesting and more amenable to being written about. "
Robin Sloan
Interesting
Little
More
" People tend to think of the quest as a sort of fanciful or fantastical form, but actually, I think it's pretty realistic. I think that story of gathering allies to your side - recruiting your band of companions - actually matches the shape of most great careers, most great lives. "
Robin Sloan
Story
Side
People
" If I am honest with myself, a not-insignificant fraction of my enjoyment of any episode of 'Game of Thrones' is delivered in its opening moments. I sit down, settle in, and... BUM-bum, bah-dah-BUM-bum. "
Robin Sloan
Sit
Down
Myself
" When you're making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you - and on your publisher - to make something that's worth buying in its physical edition. "
Robin Sloan
Worth
Book
Buying
" Social systems have values - arguments baked into their design. For example, Twitter's core argument seems to be, 'Everything should be public, and messages should find the largest audience possible.' Snapchat's might be, 'Communication should be private and ephemeral.' "
Robin Sloan
Design
Argument
Communication
" I got a bike - a fixed-gear with bright blue wheels, custom-made to my specifications. I am a San Francisco techno-hipster, so this selection was a bit of a self-caricature. But sometimes the predictable thing turns out to be the best thing, too, and you can't let that stop you. "
Robin Sloan
Blue
Bike
Best
" The vision of the Internet as a vast digital wasteland isn't correct. Everything is awesome, and we have more stuff to read than we ever have in history. "
Robin Sloan
Internet
More
History
" When you close a tab or when you finish an article on the web, it's gone unless you go back into your history or search for it or explicitly try to find it. Apps on your phone have this special property: they hang around. In some ways, they're more like a book on a bookshelf than they are like web pages. "
Robin Sloan
Search
You
Phone
" Selling books is hard to engineer. "
Robin Sloan
Engineer
Selling
Hard
" For a whole year in elementary school, when the class marched down to the school library every week, I would refuse to return my book. I would just check it out again and again. Every week. For a whole year. The object of my fourth-grade filibuster was 'D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.' "
Robin Sloan
Week
School
Library
" Everyone's lives are sort of a succession, almost like handing the baton of your life off from one person to the next to the next to the next. And hopefully, that goes on for a long time, and the changes are healthy and interesting and not, like, spiraling into darkness. "
Robin Sloan
Long
Life
Time
" Books are anchored. You return to books. You don't return to a tweet. "
Robin Sloan
You
Tweet
Anchored
" You can go as far back as fifth grade, and you will find me tinkering with media and computers, making things that are a little off the beaten track. "
Robin Sloan
Back
Find
Me
" A gift shouldn't feel like homework. "
Robin Sloan
Like
Feel
Gift
" When MUDs appeared, that was an entirely novel experience, and often an addictive one. Long before Twitter or Snapchat, MUDs inspired the moral panic of the moment: a 1993 'Wired' article titled 'The Dragon Ate My Homework' described university students losing themselves in these virtual worlds. Keep in mind: they were just words on a screen. "
Robin Sloan
Moment
Experience
Losing
" I think, personally - I don't know if other readers would agree - but reading 'Penumbra,' I detect an Internet writer or a writer who came up on the Internet. "
Robin Sloan
Who
Internet
Know
" For me, writing in public is actually super energizing and so much fun. Especially when writing can typically be really painful and certainly hard, and often, you're staring at the page and thinking, like, 'Uh, is this any good? What am I doing?' "
Robin Sloan
Good
Me
You
" There's certainly satire written about techies, but it's so snarky and snide and doesn't treat him as a whole person. The people I worked with at Twitter - they're very analytical, but they're also deep and thoughtful - I feel like they deserved a charismatic spokesperson. "
Robin Sloan
Feel
People
Thoughtful