This is not a book, but it is a podcast

In which I and Tom natter on about all and sundry interactive media.

This is not the future of the book is a podcast by Tom Abba and Baldur Bjarnason about interactive media, digital publishing, hypertext, storytelling of all sorts.

Subscribe to the podcast feed directly. Or on iTunes. Or, finally, on Overcast.

The first episode’s about an hour long and starts as a discussion on the importance of naming things. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it.

May contain swearing.

Writing

Regulating AI (plus links & notes) 27 March 2023
AI summaries and AI healthcare (links & notes) 20 March 2023
Keeping up with and assessing AI research (links & notes) 13 March 2023
Waiting for the AI Godot (Links & Notes) 6 March 2023
Copyright, Situating Search, and other links & notes 27 February 2023
Deno, Shakespeare's Emoticon, Return to Office, and other links and notes 20 February 2023
Book production, AI, Single-Page-Apps, and other links and notes 13 February 2023
Some thoughts on how to make a book, three months after I made one 10 February 2023
AI is a Hail Mary pass and other links & notes 6 February 2023
EU and copyright protections for AI-generated works and other notes 30 January 2023
On the Layoffs, Narcissists, and Other Links & Notes 23 January 2023
Madeline, Existential Terror and other links & notes 16 January 2023
Out of the Software Crisis Available on Kindle 28 December 2022
A lot can happen in a month: on AI art and the fediverse 16 December 2022
The response to Out of the Software Crisis has been amazing 5 December 2022
Programming is a Pop Culture 21 November 2022
WTF is a Framework? 18 November 2022
Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies 16 November 2022
Great apps are rare 15 November 2022
(Released!) Out of the Software Crisis: Systems-Thinking for Software Projects 14 November 2022
Out of the Software Crisis: the ebook is imminent! 11 November 2022
I wrote a book – now you must suffer with me 26 October 2022
I’m offering research, writing, and notetaking coaching for techies and programmers 17 October 2022
Playacting genius: the performative logic of reasoning from first principles 18 September 2022
I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps 4 July 2022
Essay Archive 2 June 2022
On online collaboration and our obligations as makers of software 2 June 2022
The different kinds of notes 6 May 2022
What I learned about markdown from interviewing a bunch of people 6 May 2022
The Colophon Cards User Survey 2 February 2022
How to keep up with web development without falling into despair 31 January 2022
Let's just not talk about 2021 and look forward instead 5 January 2022
Making Colophon Cards 29 November 2021
What do I need to read to be a great at CSS? 19 October 2021
The event listening toolkit: five ways to get out of an event handling mess 11 October 2021
FormData and fetch, why is serialising a form such a pain? 29 September 2021
The Single-Page-App Morality Play 6 September 2021
Software Crisis 2.0 25 August 2021
Lessons in Interactivity, 2021 redux 13 August 2021
Nobody gives a hoot about groupthink 29 July 2021
Spontant: in praise of grey 26 July 2021
Ways of reading without the influence of community 6 July 2021
The Open-Source Software bubble that is and the blogging bubble that was 11 May 2021
You are what you do, not what you say or write 4 May 2021
The Curious Case Of The Crashing Conic Gradient And How I Used A Technique I Learned In The 90s To Fix It 28 April 2021
136 facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling 21 April 2021
I’m available for projects and other work 20 April 2021
Which type of novelty-seeking web developer are you? 31 March 2021
Every Day; a Fair Warning (You Should Read These Articles) 3 March 2020
Weeknote 3 - Resistance and the dull blade 10 February 2020
Weeknote 2 (2020) - News, Bad News, and Star Wars 2 February 2020
Weeknote 1 (2020) - Ending the hiatus 26 January 2020
The Ed Tech Conundrum 2 January 2020
Thinking about the past, present, and future of web development 1 January 2020
The Web Falls Apart 3 November 2019
Weeknote 19 ─ blog redesign and changes at work 27 October 2019
When life hands you lemonades, sit down and contemplate the meaning of life 10 September 2019
Weeknote 18 - Uncertainty and Discomfort 11 August 2019
Web Dev: The Red Queen Wire Mommy of Modern Tech 6 August 2019
Weeknote 16 – Vacation 29 July 2019
Weeknote 15 - Counting Down the Days 1 July 2019
Weeknote 14 - Shadows and DOMs 25 June 2019
Weeknote 13 - The weight of deadlines 16 June 2019
That Web Dev Thing Where Everybody Says Something Clever Involving Toast 15 June 2019
SwiftUI, Privacy, macOS, and the Web 9 June 2019
Weeknote 12 - The genres of web media 5 June 2019
The Aesthetics of Concentration 3 June 2019
Weeknote 11 - do I have focus? 29 May 2019
Weeknote 10 - A clear view and more reading 20 May 2019
Weeknote 9 - Being contemplative, finishing a photo project 12 May 2019
Weeknote 8 – Moving, Endgame, and more musings on colour 5 May 2019
Weeknote 7 - Story length and that thing about colour 29 April 2019
Weeknote 6 – Star Trek, rest and spring finally arrives 22 April 2019
Weeknote 5 – Stuff, comics, superheroes, and other nonsense 14 April 2019
Weeknote 4 – TV week with The Expanse 7 April 2019
Weeknote 3 — MVPs, fatigue, and emotional crutches 31 March 2019
Web Development: with great power comes the ability to make great mistakes 24 March 2019
Weeknote 2 - Web Development Mistakes, Mary Sues, and Icy Spring 24 March 2019
Weeknote 1 18 March 2019
Hitchcock and the author construct 12 February 2019
Seams, Stitches, And The Decline Of The Mac 3 November 2018
Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well 3 September 2018
Focusing on market share blinds you to growth 7 January 2018
The future of Software Development: Just Business Logic 7 January 2018
Remote work is a completely different beast 7 January 2018
Hypertext is still the fundamental model of the web 7 January 2018
Leftover Thoughts From 2017 7 January 2018
Over-engineering is under-engineering 25 November 2017
The process is the thing 23 March 2017
Von Be Don: A few notes on a recent digital publishing project in Iceland 19 February 2017
W3C and EME: it isn't about preventing DRM but saving the W3C 14 February 2017
Unpopular opinion: dismissing indirect pointers is a mistake 4 February 2017
Anger feels like poison 24 January 2017
Is JavaScript more fragile? 7 December 2016
Debating Progressive Enhancement 5 December 2016
The downside of believing in Apple 1 November 2016
A short primer on Icelandic politics on the day of the 2016 election 29 October 2016
The Tragedy/Farce of the Open Web according to journalists 18 October 2016
Notes on debating for the web development community 17 October 2016
Addendum on loose coupling and the iOS App Store 11 October 2016
Idle thoughts on modularity and loose coupling in digital media 9 October 2016
When fear is rational 24 June 2016
Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine a better word processor than Word 7 June 2016
A thought to consider 24 May 2016
A few thoughts on standardisation, W3C, and the IDPF 16 May 2016
Filling in the gaps – the dynamics of zero marginal cost 21 April 2016
Which CMS/blog system would you choose? 12 April 2016
A few simplified points on web and document security 30 March 2016
Judge the work 21 January 2016
Why did Paul Graham argue against equality? 13 January 2016
Purpose, Joy, Capability 4 January 2016
You can't fix the App Store, so here's how you fix it 20 November 2015
Why I am worried about Twitter and why you should be too 4 November 2015
The crossroads or the wilderness 23 October 2015
You can't solve people problems with software 28 September 2015
The discussion about ad blocking is very dumb (but not in the way you think) 18 September 2015
This is not a book, but it is a podcast 10 September 2015
A week of 'This is not a book' 7 September 2015
Launching "This is not a book" – what it is and why you should be interested 1 September 2015
My kingdom for a new bookstore 28 August 2015
Modern software sucks 26 August 2015
The cost versus benefits of disorganised programming power 25 August 2015
Who benefits the most from Open Source Software? 25 August 2015
Sex Apocalypse Later 24 August 2015
Random thoughts on work and that Amazon thing 23 August 2015
Bookmarks – UI flaws and other great capers 14 August 2015
Bookmarks – learnable programming 13 August 2015
Bookmarks – More money for open-source 12 August 2015
Bookmarks – Leaving bosses 11 August 2015
Bookmarks – Promoting other people's work 10 August 2015
Bookmarks – What Would Kamala Khan Do? 7 August 2015
Bookmarks – Trickle down golden geese 6 August 2015
Bookmarks – Hateviews are us 5 August 2015
Bookmarks – Milk it 4 August 2015
Iterating the web away:
losing the next generation 4 August 2015
Bookmarks – You haven't been paying attention 3 August 2015
Bookmarks – It's a note card world, we just live in it 31 July 2015
Bookmarks – Just call it Smylfeste 30 July 2015
Bookmarks – That one is shaped like an idiot 29 July 2015
Blogger nostalgia 28 July 2015
Bookmarks – Make it simpler 28 July 2015
Wet streets cause rain and criminal responsibility 27 July 2015
Tweet bookmarks galore 26 July 2015
Random links that catch my fancy, part four of ∞ 23 July 2015
Random links that catch my fancy, part three of ∞ 22 July 2015
Mythic visions of sexuality 21 July 2015
Random links that catch my fancy, part two of ∞ 21 July 2015
Random links that catch my fancy, part one of ∞ 20 July 2015
An exercise for the reader in integration and modularity 17 July 2015
How to read my nonsense 17 July 2015
Is it distributed or just a disorganised hierarchy? 10 July 2015
On the vaunted robustness of the web 10 July 2015
The rules of the game have changed for RSS 10 July 2015
The web app developer's lament 6 July 2015
Other people write about digital media 25 June 2015
The plural of 'Medium' is clearly 'clusterfuck' 25 June 2015
Burnout 24 June 2015
The files Steven Pressfield works with 24 June 2015
iOS 9 content blocking extensions are not a mobile advertising armageddon 14 June 2015
Writing the Other:
a book that's useful to all writers 3 June 2015
Should I make a WWDC prediction?
Yes, let's 3 June 2015
Grim Meathook Present #2 2 June 2015
Other people discuss software quality (spoiler: it sucks) 2 June 2015
Other people talk about startups and entrepreneurship 2 June 2015
A few quick links and thoughts on big web problems 29 May 2015
I really want the Supergirl TV show to be fun 25 May 2015
Our Grim Meathook Present 25 May 2015
The new age of HTML:
the web is being torn apart 20 May 2015
Her movie, his name;
Mad Max: Fury Road 19 May 2015
We are a violent species 19 May 2015
Toxic environments:
inequality in tech is a symptom of something worse 18 May 2015
Where I write about Facebook's Instant Articles 16 May 2015
Facebook and the media:
united, they attack the web 15 May 2015
Speeding up decision cycles with rules and heuristics 14 May 2015
You are here #5:
UX, design, and CSS as a parasite 14 May 2015
You are here #4:
an epic journey through app dev and male bodies 13 May 2015
You are here #3:
the glorious wonders of online reading await you 12 May 2015
2015-05-11-18-39-16 11 May 2015
You are here #2:
an artisanal curation of reading material 11 May 2015
You are here #1:
a selection of fine links and tweets for your pleasure 10 May 2015
2015-05-07-00-59-18 7 May 2015
Five publishing-related thoughts on a Friday afternoon 4 May 2015
Why should people read more books? 4 May 2015
How is taxing ebooks as print books supposed to work? 4 May 2015
Kathy Sierra's Badass: Making Users Awesome – the book you all should read 4 March 2015
Idle Sunday thoughts about web trends 1 March 2015
Repetition only works in fiction 1 March 2015
The web has covered the basics — that’s why it’ll get harder from now 1 March 2015
A draft of a chapter of some thoughts on things. 9 January 2015
Taking stock of 2013 and 2014 31 December 2014
The weather, of course 17 December 2014
Publishing business ideas are a dime a dozen 3 December 2014
EU VAT changes shift the digital landscape 25 November 2014
Money is a poor measure of value 25 November 2014
On conferences 13 November 2014
Crushed by multinationals 12 November 2014
Software as a strategy: prefabricated publishers 7 November 2014
Software as strategy in the ebook world 6 November 2014
The five types of unpublished books 5 November 2014
Four hundred words from Anita Elberse's book "Blockbusters" 4 November 2014
The splintered author 4 November 2014
There is no war between Amazon and Traditional Publishing 3 November 2014
Ebooks suck for learning 10 October 2014
The Poisoning of Social Media: A Reading List 9 September 2014
Wobbly Amazon 10 August 2014
This week's must-read post 24 July 2014
Friends don’t let their friends become authors 10 July 2014
Both at the same time 4 July 2014
So I had to make an ebook cover... 15 April 2014
So long, Readmill, and thanks for all the fish 31 March 2014
What ebook production problems are self-publishers facing? 24 March 2014
Many stories, many truths 13 March 2014
Problem statements for digital publishing research 28 February 2014
To do, to do 21 February 2014
iBooks Author tempts you with bling 20 February 2014
Microsoft Word is a liability 19 February 2014
The print design mentality 18 February 2014
Book contracts 12 February 2014
Intermission: sorting through the banal 5 February 2014
How to create value with a new thing 30 January 2014
HTML is too complex 29 January 2014
The ebook as an API 28 January 2014
My last word on DRM 27 January 2014
Except, except, except 23 January 2014
A thought exercise 22 January 2014
Losing faith in yourself 21 January 2014
Changing your readership mix 20 January 2014
Sex, education, readers, and futures: what works, what doesn't 18 January 2014
The various types of readers 17 January 2014
The unevenly distributed ebook future 16 January 2014
Sex, violence, and stílbrot 15 January 2014
Recipe for pundit response to Hugh Howey’s suggestions 14 January 2014
Bling it up for education 13 January 2014
Blogging has trained me to assume you’re stupid 9 January 2014
Ergodic literature 8 January 2014
What I thought I wanted versus what I really wanted 7 January 2014
The mistake of 'enhancing' novels 6 January 2014
Pessimistic ramblings and other fun links (week overview + further reading) 4 January 2014
Stumbling into publishing 3 January 2014
The publishing industry's new product categories 2 January 2014
The last two Knights and Necromancers stories 1 January 2014
Random, loosely connected, thoughts on the future 31 December 2013
Old photos posted without context: Reykjavík Cats 29 December 2013
Old photos posted without context: Sweep After Use 22 December 2013
The Checklist: fix iBooks image handling 20 December 2013
Great text transcends nothing 17 December 2013
Quarantine all ebooks 17 October 2013
The self-publisher's perspective of the ebook market 17 October 2013
Light evening trauma 10 October 2013
Just say no to ebook CSS and JS 2 October 2013
The Google Wave Heuristic 17 September 2013
Amazon's biggest ally is Apple 12 September 2013
Readmill versus Kindle – Readmill is worth the hassle 26 August 2013
Proprietary ebook formats versus DRM 19 August 2013
Publishing has catered to dumb for a long while 16 August 2013
Computers are too difficult and people are computer illiterate 14 August 2013
Why disruption goes unchecked 12 August 2013
Make ebooks worth it 9 August 2013
Ebooks and cognitive mapping 8 August 2013
Ebook silos, update 7 August 2013
Ebook silos and missed opportunities 6 August 2013
Technology is not inherently good 5 August 2013
Administrative note on baldurbjarnason.com and feeds 29 July 2013
Posted without comment 29 July 2013
The inefficiencies of joy 24 July 2013
Winner takes all versus the Matthew effect 23 July 2013
What you people read (on my websites) 22 July 2013
Tolerating the heat, noticing the water 19 July 2013
If the Kindle fails so will ebooks 18 July 2013
Followup to 'this ebook is a lemon' 16 July 2013
This ebook is a lemon 12 July 2013
Caught between madmen and mercenaries 10 July 2013
Major update to Studio Tendra's Oz project 3 July 2013
What are self-publishing's biggest pain points? 1 July 2013
Intellectual terrain 1 July 2013
Good books don't win 26 June 2013
Why does it matter? 10 May 2013
The OZ Reading Club: Books three and four 7 May 2013
Which kind of innovation? 3 May 2013
Books and Print Showcase 2 May 2013
Peasants 30 April 2013
For the love 14 April 2013
The idiocies of young men 5 April 2013
Studio Tendra's grand and marvellous Oz Reading Club 2 April 2013
Iceland’s ‘crowd-sourced’ constitution is dead 29 March 2013
The B&N fallacy 27 February 2013
Hire me! 19 February 2013
A question only you can answer 15 February 2013
Respect the reader 6 February 2013
33 observations on the year 2012 5 February 2013
Knights and Necromancers: new books and megapacks! 4 February 2013
The falcon's shriek 2 January 2013
What is actually going on in Iceland 29 December 2012
Merry Christmas! 25 December 2012
Tag soup is history 21 December 2012
Schlock 15 December 2012
Strange definitions of 'nice' 5 December 2012
Books of Christmas Past 4 December 2012
Using IDs in CSS 26 November 2012
Design highlights from the Icelandic book season 22 November 2012
News, updates, and the Icelandic book market 19 November 2012
A response, of sorts 15 November 2012
High tide and a room of your own 8 November 2012
Knights and Necromancers 2 has been released 6 November 2012
The comment-fiction challenge post-mortem 30 October 2012
Fantasy, Collapse, and a sense of history 29 October 2012
Two questions on putting books on the web 26 October 2012
iBooks 3.0 25 October 2012
Perceptions of society 22 October 2012
What I've been up to 19 October 2012
The Readmill comment fiction challenge 1 October 2012
Is it safe? 27 September 2012
The time work takes 24 September 2012
I need your help 21 September 2012
Designing the covers 19 September 2012
Free Kindle version 19 September 2012
What is this? 17 September 2012
The stillborn creature 1 August 2012
EPUB javascript security 27 July 2012
I be writing 21 July 2012
Farce 16 July 2012
Bad writing 19 June 2012
A few random points on DRM 7 June 2012
The web and ebooks have little in common 7 May 2012
The end of ebook development 26 April 2012
Aftermath – notes on the Amazon post 20 April 2012
Today is not tomorrow (or, how to beat Amazon) 15 April 2012
Bits, bobs, and anecdata 3 April 2012
Lessons in interactivity 29 March 2012
Hierarchies of ebook design 20 March 2012
It's time to treat ebook developers as developers 12 March 2012
Code doesn't change minds 7 March 2012
Game over, Amazon wins 3 March 2012
On CSS Page Templates 2 March 2012
Javascript in ebooks 29 February 2012
Explanatory windows 20 February 2012
Readium and other good intentions 13 February 2012
ePub windows and widgets – a proposal 10 February 2012
The semantics of ebook widgets 4 February 2012
iBooks widgets – to javascript or not to javascript 1 February 2012
What do we want from the Kindle platform? 1 February 2012
Disruptive crap 27 January 2012
Me, elsewhere 26 January 2012
The pros and cons of the iBooks 2.0 textbook format 21 January 2012
The iBooks 2.0 built-in widgets 20 January 2012
The iBooks 2.0 textbook format 19 January 2012
The publishing animal 17 January 2012
A day of innovation on the future of the book 8 December 2011
What a publisher does 30 November 2011
Design pseudoscience 8 November 2011
A tale of three blog posts 28 October 2011
CSS and ebook design 24 October 2011
The loss of ambient intimacy 15 September 2011
Friday links and reading 26 August 2011
Convert or engage 4 August 2011
CSS3 Hyphens 30 July 2011
Just you & Google 29 July 2011
Knowledge is not adoption 24 July 2011
HTML5 history API 23 July 2011
Your friends, in boxes 17 July 2011
Localstorage & messaging in ePub 27 January 2011
Javascript in epub 26 January 2011
An epub experiment 25 January 2011
What is an ebook? 21 December 2010
Hypotheses and testing 25 October 2010
Identifying publishing innovators 7 October 2010
On quality in publishing 7 October 2010
An interesting discussion 28 June 2010