5 ms·
Apologies in advance for the meta-comment (feel free to disregard) about this: > [Opening Paragraph of Article:] One afternoon in August 2010, in a conference
by electrograv 8y ago
Apologies in advance for the meta-comment (feel free to disregard) about this:
> [Opening Paragraph of Article:] One afternoon in August 2010, in a conference hall perched on the edge of San Francisco Bay, a 34-year-old Londoner called Demis Hassabis took to the stage. Walking to the podium with the deliberate gait of a man trying to control his nerves, he pursed his lips into a brief smile and began to speak: [...]
Am I in the minority, when seeing this writing style (for articles covering this kind of content) becomes an instant turn-off?
When an article covers a technical subject or company, I don’t really care whether a founder had an awkward nervous walking gate, or that the conference hall was “perched” on the edge of the SF bay.
In fact, I’d prefer not to focus on such superficial things about people (or places), at least until I exhaust learning about the facts with substance!
So when I read about something like AI (or an AI company), I tend to want to see fact-oriented, event-oriented, concise writing up front (even if it doesn’t have the scope to dive into technical details), so as to grab my attention and reassure me that reading these 10-20 pages of prose will be worth the reading time (in a world of overwhelming information overload).
When I read science fiction (and I do love this too!), I enjoy the paragraphs setting the scene, verbally illustrating mental images, etc. So, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the writing style in general; just that I don’t understand why it’s applied here.
I am still reading this article and I still have no clue if it’s going to contain any useful information content other than textual descriptions of the Deep Mind founders’ superficial walking gate style and speech mannerisms, and perched-ness of various building locations.
- zipzap324 8y agoI think its clear that the Article is not a technical piece at all and is instead about Google and Deepmind's working relationship so I think your criticism is unwarranted. You can find great technical articles on Deepmind's website though. https://deepmind.com/research/ https://deepmind.com/research/
- king_magic 8y agoRight there with you. I scanned through it and found maybe 5 sentences of substance that I was interested in reading from beginning to end.
- PaulHoule 8y agoWhat substance? The story that technology A is involved in a competitions between organization B and C is a mad lib that can be filled in many ways, but A is almost always "A.I." or "5G". "Blockchain" was popular a while back but I think most people involved with that want to pretend that it didn't happen. The current A.I. fad "Deep Learning" has an origin story complete with Maple Leafs and people who say "Sorrry" when they want to say "Sorry", but 5G doesn't have a charismatic story. Either way it is a technology that doesn't need to be understood or have use cases, but everybody is racing to control it, so...
- king_magic 8y agoHuh? My point was the writing style of the article conveys little more than stylistic fluff. I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.
- PakG1 8y agoYeah, you'd be in the minority. Technical people are already in the minority. Technical people who read The Economist voraciously are an even smaller minority. 1843magazine.com looks like it's run by The Economist. I believe their target readers love reading this style of writing. It's illustrative and engaging for when you're reading a story. For gathering technical information, 1843magazine.com should not be your first option.
- mindfulplay 8y agoThis is classic Wired- style writing. They want a protagonist, a hero, a villain. It's always painted as far too simple and dramatic when most technology is actually developed in the most mundane boring ways.
- fossuser 8y agoThat writing style reminds me of the way I was forced to write essays in high school in order to get a good grade - tediously purple prose.
- godelmachine 8y agoYou certainly are not alone. I peruse “Long Reads” articles from both 1843 Mag and The Guardian. These kind of stretched out descriptions are certainly damp squib. Maybe the writers gasp for words to fill up the long reads articles, or they have had abortive shots at becoming fiction writers.
- Nimitz14 8y ago1843 is The Economist's version of the New Yorker. It's for people who like to read for the sake of reading and enjoy going on lots of digressions for the fun of it (I love it). The weekly The Economist magazine is much dryer and should suit your tastes better.
- voidhorse 8y agoIt’s a common style in certain pieces of journalism. It’s predicated on the idea that people both enjoy and connect more deeply to narrative and concrete detail. I’m with you—I find that the style is frequently overused these days and really annoying when all I want out of the article is some basic information/reportage. It’s used to fantastic effect in things like expose peieces, or deep explorations of pervasive issues that have a rich history, but more often than not, journalists feel like they have to whip it out for every little nugget of news when straightforward, sober reportage would suffice.
- dna_polymerase 8y agoThose "Creative Writing" Degrees have to be good for something after all.
- SilasX 8y agoCouldn't have said it better myself; this annoys the heck out of me that I have to get through six paragraphs just to know what's going on. I cringe whenever I find out that the topic I want to care about is in The New Yorker and pray that someone has written the tl'dr. I'm all for vivid, engaging prose, but not in news articles. I want "just the facts, ma'am".