For our first book club, we read Robin Sloan’s novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore. But please stick around even if you haven’t read the book; there’s plenty for everyone to talk about.
“Penumbra,” an adventure about a mysterious San Francisco bookstore and the secrets within, is about the endlessly evolving, disruptive nature of technology, going all the way back to Manutius’ innovations in book-printing and publishing. But amidst all this change, and the amazing tools we now have at our disposal, Robin makes a larger argument about what’s truly important and worth prioritizing: our relationships. In the epilogue, the author wraps it up with this lovely bit:
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It's not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we're still getting used to. …
Often, we take those relationships and that work for granted. Let’s highlight some of your favorite examples:
What does friendship and care look like on the internet?
Feel free to discuss the book in full, but consider starting your post with SPOILER if you want to talk plot specifics. Also, we have Robin in the chat at the start. Please feel free to ask him any questions you have about the book or any other aspects of his work, from making music with AI, to paying close attention online, to thinking about web3, to making olive oil.
We are assuming that you, like us, are looking for more flourishing places on the internet. We want this to be one of those places! Please treat others with openness, generosity and respect.
Later this morning, at this cafe where I'm sitting now, I'll meet up with an old friend who's just read the manuscript for my next novel. This is my season for feedback, and it has convinced me: reading someone's work, and *thinking* about it, and *articulating* those thoughts, is one of the deepest expressions of friendship & care there is. Oh—and doing so privately. The "private email response to a public post" is hugely underrated.
I always think of Wikipedia. Those mods work so hard, for free, on subjects very much being written in real time. And I'd be willing to bet that there's no small amount of friendship being formed on there as well.
What struck me most about the book was its incredible generosity - as someone who (for my sins) worked at Google in that pre-techlash era but also is a huge lover of old bookshops and mysteries - there was something about the tone of Mr Penumbra that I seek in internet spaces in general. Even characters that were - ahem - less charming than others, such as Ms Google, were dealt with kindly. That felt so rare. Especially, the epilogue, the idea of living your life like an open city, has stayed with me very strongly.
Drawing on Robin's idea that to love on the internet is to return: on social media specifically, I think slowing down and allowing space for context might be an act of care.
Robin, I just learned that you’re involved in making music with AI. Alan Kay’s project at Xerox PARC creating a system that transcribed music improvisations played at a keyboard was one of the first things to get me excited about computers. And a friend of mine later developed the program, Instant Music, for the Amiga. It was the first contrained semi-automatic music program. Later, I programmed some code in Forth that controlled a Serge Modular synthesizer to interact with the user, via genetic algorithms, to produce “music” the user liked. Please say more about what you’re doing. P.S.: I loved your book. Great fun!
Robin has exited the chat, but he's left a lot of great stuff in here to think about and respond to. Let's open it up to other questions/comments about the book. Stay tuned for a very long, wide-ranging conversation Q+A with Robin in the New_ Public newsletter this Sunday.
I think that care causes friction, and on an internet that seeks a "frictionless" experience, it can sometimes feel antithetical. Friction "slows things down" as others have mentioned here as an important part of that, but there's also a sense of synchronicity that still feels not achieved--spaces where you feel truly present with others. Despite everything we experienced during COVID on Zoom and other real-time platforms, that sense of presence was missing.
my Twitter alt (and network of my friends’s alts) is one of my favorite places to ambiently keep up with people and enjoy social media sans the performative aspects
Also, as care goes, the most gorgeous thing I've read lately -- and it's so good *every* trans person I have ever met over the age of 16 is reading it or has read it (bc who doesn't love the success of reading a 61-page book??) -- is Malatino's _Trans Care_, free here: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/trans-care
In the book, there was to me a tension between 1) our human fascination and desire to attain individual immortality and 2) maintaining traditions versus cultivating sustainable friendships and celebrating incredible collaborations through eternity. Which is better, or more valuable to society? Admiration for a great sports TEAM or a GOAT athlete? But, really, could the athlete have accomplished much by themselves? Unfortunately, it seems to me that our society doesn’t do enough to highlight supportive networks, collaborations, friendships online or IRL.
Unfortunately I haven't read Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore, though based on this description I'll check it out!
To answer the question, I've been thinking a lot recently about crowdfunding campaigns and their evolution in recent years into spaces for mutual aid in times of crisis, and the networks that are built out of providing direct financial assistance to those in need. While crowdfunding platforms themselves have questionable ethics as for-profit entities, and the societal need to help those in distress in lieu of government intervention is problematic at best, it has been heartening to see strangers take care for one another over and over again.
Later this morning, at this cafe where I'm sitting now, I'll meet up with an old friend who's just read the manuscript for my next novel. This is my season for feedback, and it has convinced me: reading someone's work, and *thinking* about it, and *articulating* those thoughts, is one of the deepest expressions of friendship & care there is. Oh—and doing so privately. The "private email response to a public post" is hugely underrated.
I always think of Wikipedia. Those mods work so hard, for free, on subjects very much being written in real time. And I'd be willing to bet that there's no small amount of friendship being formed on there as well.
What struck me most about the book was its incredible generosity - as someone who (for my sins) worked at Google in that pre-techlash era but also is a huge lover of old bookshops and mysteries - there was something about the tone of Mr Penumbra that I seek in internet spaces in general. Even characters that were - ahem - less charming than others, such as Ms Google, were dealt with kindly. That felt so rare. Especially, the epilogue, the idea of living your life like an open city, has stayed with me very strongly.
Drawing on Robin's idea that to love on the internet is to return: on social media specifically, I think slowing down and allowing space for context might be an act of care.
Robin, I just learned that you’re involved in making music with AI. Alan Kay’s project at Xerox PARC creating a system that transcribed music improvisations played at a keyboard was one of the first things to get me excited about computers. And a friend of mine later developed the program, Instant Music, for the Amiga. It was the first contrained semi-automatic music program. Later, I programmed some code in Forth that controlled a Serge Modular synthesizer to interact with the user, via genetic algorithms, to produce “music” the user liked. Please say more about what you’re doing. P.S.: I loved your book. Great fun!
Robin has exited the chat, but he's left a lot of great stuff in here to think about and respond to. Let's open it up to other questions/comments about the book. Stay tuned for a very long, wide-ranging conversation Q+A with Robin in the New_ Public newsletter this Sunday.
I think that care causes friction, and on an internet that seeks a "frictionless" experience, it can sometimes feel antithetical. Friction "slows things down" as others have mentioned here as an important part of that, but there's also a sense of synchronicity that still feels not achieved--spaces where you feel truly present with others. Despite everything we experienced during COVID on Zoom and other real-time platforms, that sense of presence was missing.
my Twitter alt (and network of my friends’s alts) is one of my favorite places to ambiently keep up with people and enjoy social media sans the performative aspects
a lil reflection I wrote on this a couple years ago: https://jasmine.substack.com/p/-all-the-worlds-a-stage
Also, as care goes, the most gorgeous thing I've read lately -- and it's so good *every* trans person I have ever met over the age of 16 is reading it or has read it (bc who doesn't love the success of reading a 61-page book??) -- is Malatino's _Trans Care_, free here: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/trans-care
In the book, there was to me a tension between 1) our human fascination and desire to attain individual immortality and 2) maintaining traditions versus cultivating sustainable friendships and celebrating incredible collaborations through eternity. Which is better, or more valuable to society? Admiration for a great sports TEAM or a GOAT athlete? But, really, could the athlete have accomplished much by themselves? Unfortunately, it seems to me that our society doesn’t do enough to highlight supportive networks, collaborations, friendships online or IRL.
Unfortunately I haven't read Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore, though based on this description I'll check it out!
To answer the question, I've been thinking a lot recently about crowdfunding campaigns and their evolution in recent years into spaces for mutual aid in times of crisis, and the networks that are built out of providing direct financial assistance to those in need. While crowdfunding platforms themselves have questionable ethics as for-profit entities, and the societal need to help those in distress in lieu of government intervention is problematic at best, it has been heartening to see strangers take care for one another over and over again.