Clive Thompson – Medium

Clive Thompson

Featured Book

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

A fun and richly reported dive into the psychology, mindset and creativity of programmers—and how they're remaking the way the world works.

2019

Stories

Pinned

In

The Medium Handbook

by

Clive Thompson

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Oct 8, 2021

What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation

I made a web tool that lets you spy your hidden literary style

What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation

Clive Thompson

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Dec 1, 2023

Why I’ve Started Playing With Legos

A surprisingly great way to pull your brain away from your keyboard

A small car made from a black Lego brick with two sets of wheels attached beneath it, a angled clear brick for window shield, and a white brick at the back, holding two round bricks that looked like jet engines, pointing at the back of the car

Clive Thompson

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Nov 30, 2023

How Numb Hands Nearly Ended My Cycling Lifestyle

I wasn’t careful with how I rode, and my body rebelled

A photo of a man's left hand, reaching down to grasp the left handlebar of a bicycle. The handlebars are black, and we only see the left-hand side of the handlebars, with the front wheel of the bicycle out of focus in the background of the picture.

Clive Thompson

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Nov 27, 2023

The “Range Anxiety” Society

As we electrify all parts of life, battery reliability will become a bigger and bigger issue

A picture of an electric car being charged. There is a grey charging nozzle sticking out of the charge port on the

Clive Thompson

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Nov 24, 2023

ChatGPT Considered As A “Skill Leveler”

Large language-models might reduce the spread between higher and lower-performing office workers

ChatGPT Considered As A “Skill Leveler”

Clive Thompson

·

Nov 20, 2023

It’s Getting Easier To Have Climate Stories Greenlighted

I’ve been trying to write climate stories for 30 years. Now editors are getting on board

A photo of someone sitting on a wooden park bench, with their legs crossed, holding up a broadsheet newspaper. The newspaper covers their face; only the top of their head, with short black hair, is visible

Clive Thompson

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Nov 13, 2023

When Cheap Tech Is Good Enough

Four bottom-of-the-barrel tools I love

On a black background there are three close-up images of Airpod-style earbuds. They appear to be x-rays — the external shell of the earbuds is dark-to-invisible against the back background, while the internal electronics glow in blue, yellow, orange and red

Clive Thompson

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Nov 10, 2023

AI for Rewilding Your Street

The “Dutch Cycling Lifestyle” app replaces cars with plants, bikes and pedestrians

A photo of a street, as if we were standing in the middle of the street and seeing it recede in the distance. The photo is divided in half down the vertical center. On the left hand side is the regular street, showing vehicular traffic riding away us; a large white van is in front of us, and behind it are perhaps a dozen cars, all moving away from us. On the right hand side is the same street, except transformed to have no cars. The street is a walkway, filled with potted flowers

Clive Thompson

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Nov 6, 2023

The Laptop That Won’t Die

My $200, 12-year-old Thinkpad has outlasted two high-end Macbooks

A laptop sitting on a wooden table, with a large green electronic chipboard to its right. The laptop is open and displays a Medium essay written by the author of this blog post. The laptop is thick and chunky

Clive Thompson

·

Nov 1, 2023

The Literary Style of Alt-Text

The meditative art of describing images in words

A group of alphabetic dice spelling out the words “ALT TEXT”. They are on a white surface and surrounded on all sides by perhaps two dozen similar dice that have random letters that spell nothing. Each die has a small hole going through the center; they’re the type of dice you see used to make bracelets that spell out messages

Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson

Book Author

Tech, science, culture -- and how they collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. Mastodon: @clive@saturation.social; clive@clivethompson.net

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