I’m not sure how many people noticed, but Clive Thompson — one of my favourite technology and science writers — returned to blogging this week. Clive writes regularly for the New York Times magazine, and his most recent piece was an excellent look at Twitter and the phenomenon of “ambient awareness” that such social-media tools allow, and why that’s a good thing. Clive’s blog Collision Detection used to be a treasure trove of those kinds of observations, drawn from scientific journals and various news articles, and after seven months of absence (which he says he will explain later), he is back to blogging.
In analyzing and describing complicated things, Clive has a great way of humanizing things as well, often with just a simple turn of phrase....