Great Reading from the Times

In late November, the NY Times published a special edition of its Sunday magazine called the "Screens" issue. There's so much in there.... a great piece by Kevin Kelly on "screen literacy," a piece about Netflix's recommendation technology, and interviews with David Lynch and Jennifer Aniston. Also an A.O. Scott piece about whether the movie theater is endangered.

Here's the explanatory intro:

Every fall the magazine publishes a special issue about Hollywood, a celebration and investigation of that unique experience called moviegoing: sitting in a dark theater for two hours with a few hundred strangers and being entertained by flickering lights and amplified sound. This year, we’ve stretched the issue to reflect a new reality: when you watch moving pictures these days, a theater is the last place you are likely to be. Cable, YouTube, DVDs, DVR, news briefs in the elevator and cartoons on your cellphone — through a variety of media, we now consume fragmented narratives on multiple screens. From a 16-second panda-sneeze video to 60 straight hours of “The Wire,” this is the way we watch now.

And in today's paper, Laura Holson has a piece headlined, 'Who Needs a TV? I'm Watching on a Laptop'

Just as more and more people have abandoned land-line telephones for their cell phone, it seems that the next trend is abandoning your home cable connection (and TV) for laptop video viewing.