{"id":213,"date":"2018-12-23T18:55:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=213"},"modified":"2018-12-23T18:55:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:55:42","slug":"on-janet-malcolm-on-shipley-schwalbe-on-email-in-the-new-york-review-the-power-of-skywriting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/23\/on-janet-malcolm-on-shipley-schwalbe-on-email-in-the-new-york-review-the-power-of-skywriting\/","title":{"rendered":"On Janet Malcolm on Shipley &amp; Schwalbe on Email in the New York Review: The Power of Skywriting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On: Janet Malcolm &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/20571\">Pandora&#8217;s Click<\/a>,&#8221; a review of Shipley &amp; Schwalbe&#8217;s <i>The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home<\/i> by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe<\/p>\n<p><b>The Power of Skywriting<\/b><\/p>\n<p>What makes email into a potential nuclear weapon (and, like nuclear power, usable for either melioration or mischief) is its &#8220;skywriting&#8221; potential: the fact that multiple copies can easily, and almost instantly, proliferate, intentionally or unintentionally, to targets, intended and unintended, all over the planet. Paper letter-writing (indeed all writing) already had much the same possibility for haste, thoughtlessness, solecism and misinterpretation, and it too was deprived of the emotional, interpersonal cues of the oral tradition of real-time, &#8220;live,&#8221; interactive speech. But it was when writing took to the skies with email and the web that it came into its own. Hearsay, even when augmented by video and telecommunications, never quite attained the destructive (and constructive) power of skywriting. It&#8217;s all a matter of timing, scope and scale. <i>Verba volunt, scripta manent. <\/i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Harnad, S. (2003) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interdisciplines.org\/defispublicationweb\/papers\/6\">Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought<\/a>. <i>Interdisciplines<\/i>. In: Sala\u00fcn, Jean-Michel &amp; Vendendorpe, Christian (eds.). <i>Le d\u00e9fi de la publication sur le web: hyperlectures, cybertextes et m\u00e9ta-\u00e9ditions<\/i>. Presses de l&#8217;enssib.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On: Janet Malcolm &#8220;Pandora&#8217;s Click,&#8221; a review of Shipley &amp; Schwalbe&#8217;s The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe The Power of Skywriting What makes email into a potential nuclear weapon (and, like nuclear power, usable for either melioration or mischief) is its &#8220;skywriting&#8221; potential: the fact that &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/23\/on-janet-malcolm-on-shipley-schwalbe-on-email-in-the-new-york-review-the-power-of-skywriting\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On Janet Malcolm on Shipley &amp; Schwalbe on Email in the New York Review: The Power of Skywriting&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}