我们都知道这种感觉。你在悲伤的夜晚失眠，或者在朦胧的周末清晨蹒跚而行，需要一些阅读的东西，而那一堆未读的书并不能阻止你。为什么不从Twitter和RSS的消防水龙带中休息一下，看看我们每周从网络上收集的关于技术、文化、媒体和未来的重要文章？当然，坐在Instapaper队列中你会感到内疚的还有一件事，但总比再次在Twitter列表上徒劳地拉好。

在轮辋上

詹姆斯·苏罗维茨基看了看轮辋哪里出了问题。

《纽约客》：詹姆斯·苏罗维茨基——动态研究与黑莓的兴衰

C***umerization has been disastrous for R.I.M., because the company has seemed clueless about what c***umers want. R.I.M. didn’t bring out a touch-screen phone until long after Apple, and the device that it eventually launched was a pale imitation of the iPhone. Although the BlackBerry brand name was once seen as a revolutionary success, over time R.I.M.’s product line became bewilderingly large, with inscrutable model names. If you’re a c***umer, do you want the 8300 or the seemingly identical 8330? And the BlackBerry’s closed system has left R.I.M. ill equipped for a world in which phones and tablets are platforms for the whole app ecosystem.

论复古

苹果的skeumorphic（毛绒皮革背景、iCal的缝线、报摊的书架）倾向常常被认为是糟糕的设计，但苹果并不是唯一的违规者。例如，大多数日历应用程序仍然坚持让用户浏览，就好像界面仍然受到纸质页面的限制一样。

连线英国：克莱夫汤普森-复古设计是削弱创新

Now ask yourself this: why does Google Calendar — and nearly every other digital calendar, come to that — work in this way? It’s a strange waste of space, forcing you to look at three weeks of the past. Those weeks are largely irrelevant now. A digital calendar could be much more clever; it could reformat on the fly, putting the current week at the top of the screen, so that you always see the next three weeks at a glance.

在tumblr上

《连线英国》介绍了Tumblr的创始人大卫·卡普（David Karp），他在2006年与马可·阿蒙特（Marco Arment）的两周休息时间里，用自诩为“笨蛋，书呆子”（dippy，nerdy kid）的简单博客工具为Sorkin ready改编搭建了舞台，在网站的简单开端上进行了构建和创新，扮演了一个纽约媒体界小名人的角色，以及管理增长最快的社交网络之一的疯狂增长。

《连线英国》：汤姆·柴郡——成功的绊脚石：Tumblr的大卫·卡普如何建立一个5亿英镑的帝国

"The social network that emerges out of Tumblr is interesting because it’s driven by content, not by the social graph that these other networks are building around," says John Maloney, the company’s president. And that content spreads quickly: on average, a Tumblr post gets reblogged nine times.

在裂缝上

乔安妮·麦克尼尔（Joanne Mcneil）回忆起她使用一部破裂的iPhone**的经历，这部**有一种奇怪的效果，它会促使关心她的陌生人搭讪，奇怪地看着她，并一再担心碎玻璃会割伤她的手指。

根茎：乔安妮·麦克尼尔-我的破iPhone

But a digital device is not an alarm clock or a shelving unit. It will grow obsolete very quickly. Which makes the atemporal look of electronics by Apple more uncanny, more rarefied. The personal computer as Holly Golightly’s little black dress.

关于评论

作家兼时代书评家列夫·格罗斯曼和里贾娜·斯莫尔认为，在这样一个时代，批评界发生了什么？你会发现，在这个时代，对一切事物的评价都是无止境的，文学价值的标准似乎也消失了。

《时代》：列夫·格罗斯曼：《超越好与坏：亚马逊评论时代的文学价值》

Not that things were better in the old days; in fact it was horribly oppressive. But post-Amazon and GoodReads, it’s much harder to maintain a stable, abstract idea of what literary value or greatness or what-have-you means — not in the face of all those stars. Personally I like The Great Gat**y, but if I wanted to make the case that my opinion about it was more valid or significant than those one-star reviews, I’m not sure how I’d go about it. "Personally" is about all that’s left.

还有锥子：里贾娜·斯莫尔——我永远不会告诉你你错了，列夫·格罗斯曼

But you get to keep talking and so does everyone else — and if there is any way to transcend the crippling fear that you are but a tiny, isolated transient bit of c***ciousness, the first step might be the weird decision to accept that…you are a tiny, isolated transient bit of c***ciousness, who needs to hear the plaintive one-star cries of all those people who might be/definitely are/definitely aren’t wrong.

关于有声读物

玛姬·格拉姆（Maggie Gram）讲述了有声读物的历史——在20世纪30年代，由于一战期间许多士兵失明，Works项目管理局创作了一本有声读物（在国会图书馆可以找到更多信息）——并探讨了这种形式在阅读世界中作为二等公民的持续地位。

n+1:Maggie Gram——听书

I thought about starting this essay by insisting that I listen to audio books for work, so that I could not be mistaken for that other kind of person, that kind of person who listens audio books because it brings her some kind of unsophisticated pleasure. I am not, I wanted you to know, your Aunt Paula. My kitchen is not decorated with rooster towel racks and rooster potholders and rooster trim. I am a very serious person.

你想在下周的版本中看到你最喜欢的吗？把它们发到@thomashouston或者在下面的评论中分享。