John Siracusa
Really Specific Stories
The Gentle Introduction to Strangers
"I am a New Yorker after all. I don't know why people are talking to each other in public," he says. "It's happened to you enough times that you're not shocked by it, but you're not suddenly dear in headlights and don't know what you're supposed to do." W.D. received is the only place where he gets recognized by anybody.
John covers his extensive history as a Mac enthusiast, web developer, writer, podcaster and lover of music and art. He also explains his transition to a fully independent career on the Internet and how he has juggled various personas, roles and fandoms over the years.
Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (producer)
Find John at hypercritical.co.
Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.
Links and Show Notes
I Was Primed 00:00:00
- Mur Lafferty
- Geek Fu Action Grip (now in the Internet Archive)
- I Should Be Writing
- iPod
- iTunes
- NPR
- Apple Inc.
- YouTuber
- Dan Benjamin
- RSS
- Hypercritical (podcast)
- Gabe Newell
- Valve Corporation
- Half-Life (series)
- Portal (series)
- Ars Technica
- Book review: Infinite Loop — John’s first article for Ars Technica
- Ivory tower
- Hypercritical (the mentioned article from John’s Ars Technica blog, now linked on his website)
- Steve Jobs
I Had the Cultural Context 00:08:22
- Home computer (redirected from ‘personal computer revolution’)
- Commodore VIC-20
- Macintosh 128K
- Graphical user interface (GUI)
- Pictionary
- Usenet
- U2
- Ken Fisher
- Mac (computer)
- Mac OS X
- NeXT
- Macintosh clone
- OS X Reviewed (a blog post that links to all of John’s reviews)
- Engadget
- ebook
- Amazon (company)
- Unix
- MacUser
- Macworld
- MacWEEK
Multiple ‘Me’s 00:20:13
- Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
- A text file online that preserves information from John’s U2 Lyrics Archive
- Perl
- CPAN
- 5by5
- Jason Snell
- The Incomparable
- Robot or Not?
- Merlin Mann
- Back to Work
- Marco Arment
- Build and Analyze was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
- Casey Liss
- Hypercritical (website)
- Independence Day (blog post about John’s career transition)
- Open source
A Childhood Dream 00:33:42
- BASIC
- HyperCard
- Computer programming
- Web developer
- Below are blog posts about John’s two Mac apps:
- Front and Center; and
- SwitchGlass, along with the more recent SwitchGlass 2.0.
- Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)
- API
- iOS
- CodeWarrior
- App Store (iOS/iPadOS)
- Mac App Store
Apple Tech-nerd World 00:42:18
- AnandTech
- Tom’s Hardware
- Microsoft Windows
- Windows 95
- Celeron
- Context collapse
- Fandom
- Anti-fan
- Some references to terminals include:
- ‘Seeing the matrix’ means seeing the true nature of reality (or any particular situation) and is a phrase from The Matrix franchise.
- Marvel Comics
- DC Comics
- Ford Mustang
- Chevrolet Camaro
- Tom Cruise
- New York City
- The Incomparable Mothership
- Mastodon (social network)
Repotting Myself 00:59:13
- John’s use of the initialism ‘m.o.’ refers to the Latin term ‘modus operandi’, which is translated approximately as ‘mode (or manner) of operating’.
- ARM architecture family (John’s reference to ‘ARM Macs’, running Apple Silicon)
- John Gruber
- BMX bike
- Remote-control car
Credits
Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio
Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion
Contact
- Website: rsspod.net
- Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
- Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
- Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld
A Special Note
Martin is a paid subscriber of John Siracusa’s shared membership program for Accidental Tech Podcast; this did not influence any of the questions that were asked and did not place any expectations on John as a participant of this academic podcasting project.
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