street meets superhighway

I just finished reading The Streetwise Cycle, a writing/publishing/web 2.0 adventure my friend Bronwyn decided to embark on. Despite the amount of time I spend on blogs and Facebook, I’m fairly old-fashioned when it comes to lit-er-a-ture (that was my attempt to write out a snobby accent phonetically). I like a good narrative, and even though I’m not picky about how it finds me—hardcover, paperback, CD, e-book—I don’t usually crave interactivity, and fakey bells and whistles annoy me when they come at the expense of a good narrative. So I wasn’t the most obvious or un-skeptical audience for this project, except for the good narrative part.

But ultimately I’m envious of Bronwyn, who has a great eye for detail (I wish you guys could read her near-future novel Off the Grid, but it’s not online…yet) but also loves to do things like search out open-source Hungarian alternatives to PowerPoint in her spare time. I would kill to be technologically curious like that.

Since I’m not, though, I just enjoyed the fruits of her labor: perfectly internet-sized* stories of interconnected Angelenos (I do know a thing or two about that), fun photos of ‘hoods I know, maps, word clouds, ideas about the future. But I wasn’t able to answer all the questions in the reader guide, so I think it might be time for a second read. Check it out, spread the word and let Bronwyn know in the comments section just what you think of homeless people.


*What is “perfectly internet-sized”? To me it means small text blocks and short sections I can consume during (hypothetical) breaks at work, but which still add up to something meaty.