Pointers (June 2023)

Bounties of the internet, June 2023 edition:

• The Verge’s The Hidden History of Screen Readers, which got me wondering why computers provide so little auditory output beyond fixed notification sounds. The obvious answer is that computers have historically been used in quiet settings, but now that everyone uses headphones much of the time, there may be new opportunities.
• Also from The Verge: a lean documentary on how Apple literally buried the Lisa to make way for the Mac.
• The Body in the Machine, a review of the work of programmer and author Ellen Ullman. Some authors are great at conveying immediate subjective experience, some are great at bringing clarity to abstract concepts; Ullman is rare in succeeding at both simultaneously.
• Emily Bender’s Thought Experiment in the National Library of Thailand makes a very intuitive argument about the limits of understanding for language models that have been trained only on text.
• From The Paris Review: Robert Gottlieb, The Art of Editing No. 1, on the late editor behind a number of authors you’ve almost certainly read. So quotable I won’t quote it at all — I wouldn’t know where to end; just go read it.