Today the thousand twangling instruments that Ariel and his sprites conjure up are replaced by millions of tweets, status updates, but they still fill the world with sweet sounds, and offer us a vision of a digital world that can be as rich and full of delight as we choose to make it. It’s reassuring to see that some of our best artists are working hard to make that happen. (Bill Thompson)

Right on Kris! “When a production is doing well, and has good word-of-mouth (which is forever and always the best form of publicity), it attracts patrons of immense, incalculable value: those who do not normally attend the theatre. These are the only people, by definiton, that can grow the theatrical audience.

So what does the success of this screen Phèdre tell us? Partly that a cinema audience can be as moved as people sitting in the theatre: everyone applauded loudly at the curtain call just as if they were in the Lyttelton. But the main lesson is that a theatre production can be made democratically available to a mass audience without any loss of quality: indeed because the camera can mix close-up and long shot and because we can all hear easily, the aesthetic impact may actually be enhanced. For generations we have been told that the theatre is elitist. Last night it was shown that a supposedly difficult classical tragedy can speak simultaneously to people across the globe. The National already has plans to broadcast three more plays over the next year. But my hunch is that this is only the beginning of a revolution in making theatre available in ways of which we had never dreamed.

Enough already with nostalgia about the 60s movement. Different times, different context. There was the draft, the cultural revolution, I think there is still courage and inspiration out there today but it takes different forms and the new social media is fueling it. Obama would never have been elected were this not so. Look at how he raised money. Revolutionary. Looked how his campaign galvanized young people and people of color. Revolutionary. He is a product of the 1960s and is being very smart about it. Now, in this new context, and using the social media, and seeking out the various progressive networks that are out there by reading the progressive blogs and magazines you can plug yourself in to today’s movement. It’s never too late.

Why using books to read will never die #infsum

Pulling it off the shelf is like sticking one heel of my shoe in a time machine. I can smell the stale bread, the whiff of burnt coffee, the reek of incense coming up from Mr Evergreen’s residence below the coffee shop (he lived in the basement). But I think I’m more prepared now to handle the heft of the text than I was then. I certainly spend more time on airplanes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I feel as if I’m being reunited with an old friend; rather, I feel like I’m unlocking the door and setting free a bizarre and feral child from a dusty garret I had locked it in 12 years ago. Should be a good summer.

And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this “ambient awareness”: by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don’t think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

… the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what we’re doing to it.