Go fearlessly into the Internet, but not blindly, says Virginia Heffernan – each corner of digital culture has its best practices. Not learning them is a disrespect. Heffernan's book is "Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art" (goo.gl/Ertv9O). Read more at BigThink.com: bigthink.com/videos/virginia-heffernan-on-embracing-technology-and-best-practices Follow Big Think here: YouTube: goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - The book does have some pragmatic and concrete suggestions. The first is stop hating ourselves for participating in digital culture. It's a real drag on our health and our immune system to spend our time on our phones or on our laptops or in other kinds of digital space using GPS technology thinking that there's something wrong with us for doing it. So that's the first thing that the book really asks people to do it just for an hour or two imagine the Internet is not a neurotoxin, it's not causing brain damage. It's an opportunity and an opportunity to use wholeheartedly, to use with confidence, to use with dignity, to use with all of your humanity. Now each of the forms has its own constraints. So if you're using text online to show up to consumers or to meet your friends then there are certain considerations and they're the considerations that poets have made sense of. One of the most beautiful things I've ever heard said about how poets construct their sentences, their phrases, their lines is that - this is Helen Vendler the great critic of poetry. She says that every moment after every word any word can follow it next. So in the gap between two words you give the impression or the illusion that any word is possible. And the reader should feel just a slight, slight micron intake of breath like what could come next. So for companies showing up online, surprise, delight. How do you use that little space between words so that you don't – say you are leveraging a cliché like at the end of the day, maybe it's at the end of the millennium, maybe it's a different word there other than day. Read Full Transcript Here: goo.gl/MtwxTH.

Be the first to comment