Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Twitter Is Collapsing Because Humans Aren’t Wired To Have That Many “Friends”
The reason the Babel story matters is not that it happened once but that it happens over and over: We Babelize and de-Babelize. The...
Rise Of The Intellectual Influencer Economy
As higher education continues to over-produce PhDs, many have sought an alternative path. This is a new niche of the online info-tainment ecosystem. These intellectual...
Readers Are Just Full Of Pet Peeves About Books
Apparently, book lovers have been storing up their pet peeves in the cellar for years, just waiting for someone to ask. Hundreds and hundreds...
AI Is Pretty Good At Writing Poetry. It Doesn’t Mean Anything
Of course, every Dickinson poem reflects her intention to create meaning. When ChatGPT puts words together, it does not intend anything. Some argue that writings by...
Why Beyonce’s Cultural Heft Exceeds Her Commercial Success
It’s clear that despite her status, in purely commercial terms Beyoncé is not a dominating presence in the music industry, with many artists selling...
Why “Tar” Has Become Something Of A Cult Film
Music, ephemeral in its power over our emotions, is a notoriously demanding discipline, so this film presents exciting possibilities for an exploration of the...
The Tyranny Of Having To Have Stories
Forty years ago, Peter Brooks produced a pathbreaking study, Reading for the Plot, which was part of the so-called narrative turn in literary criticism. Narratology,...
AI Chatbots Will Extend Human Creativity, Not Replace It
There will always be a need for genuine community and human connection, which can be aided by tools like this. We see chatbots being...
Margaret Atwood: Book-Banning In Historical Context
Freedom of expression is a hot potato—freedom for whom and for what, and who decides? The last English writer before the late 20th century...
Why Learning To Write Is About So Much More Than Writing
Learning to write is about more than learning to write. For one thing, it’s about learning to turn a loose assemblage of thoughts into...
Our Kids Are Struggling To Read. Growing Evidence Suggests We Can Teach Them A...
There is growing evidence from neuroscience and careful experiments that the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and that we haven’t relied...
Dudamel And The LA/NY Rivalry
The defection of Gustavo Dudamel from L.A. to conduct the New York Philharmonic reflects more than a switch in energy and show business muscle; the Venezuela-born...
Online Shopping Was Supposed To Improve The Experience. Instead, It’s Getting Much Worse
The search results are full of ads. You can’t come up with the right string of words to get more useful results. The reviews,...
Canada’s Indigo Books Hit By Ransomware
Indigo says it can't process electronic payments, accept gift cards or deal with returns. But at one location in Toronto on Friday, the store...
Of Institutions And Colonialism
It is hard to think of any human institution enduring for centuries of which it can seriously be said it was all good or...
Buckminster Fuller’s Greatest Talent? Self-Promotion
As Inventor of the Future reveals, “Bucky” had a penchant for claiming sole authorship over projects within his orbit, even when they were largely realized through...
Morton Subotnick At 90: New Music Isn’t Possible
possible. We’re not geared to it, because music is part of us—we get it so early in life that we’re not geared to something...
Why Legislation To Force Big Tech Platforms To Pay For News Stories They Link...
Journalists don’t particularly like to hear it, but news stories make up only 2% to 3% of the average user’s News Feed on Facebook,...
Dance On Film Is A Tricky Business
Call Me Dancer represents the strongest slice of the films on offer: works that engage the politics and economics of the dance world. These films...
Appreciating Burt Bacharach
Bacharach may have been a uniter, not a divider, but surely it’s easy to hear the complexity underneath that ease. The unpredictability and the...
Hirshhorn Museum Hits The Reality TV World With An Artist Competition
The program, which starts March 3, focuses on seven rising artists from around the country who were selected by Hirshhorn curators. Each week, the...
Two Major Maestro Appointments This Month: What They Tell Us About The Orchestra Business
Both Lahav Shani and Gustavo Dudamel are safe choices. Musicians and audiences feel comfortable with them. Unfortunately, challenging programs will probably be rare. - Van
Nezet-Seguin Talks About His Next Chapter
Now in his 11th season as music director, he’s hired 23 new musicians and commissioned 37 works, including from composers of different cultures, backgrounds,...
Canada’s CBC Is Heading To A Digital-First Future, Says Its President
“If we’re going to be audience first we have to be digital first. We get up every day and say, ‘What do our audiences...
New Numbers: North America Is No Longer Netflix’s Biggest Market
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) quietly became the streamer’s biggest region in terms of subscribers, overtaking the combined user figure for the...
