Every morning I skim through hundreds of articles, blog posts and news reports, looking to come to grips with what’s happening in our world. I often save longer form stories for late-in-the-day reading. But there is some writing that needs to be shared immediately for they are worth reading and giving your day a kickstart.

• Dave Winer, the granddaddy of blogging, deconstructs Ev Williams’ (Blogger, Twitter) newest creation, Medium. Here is his short and succinct take: It’s closest to Tumblr right now — another product that occupies the space between full-blown blogging like WordPress, and ultra lightweight blogging in Twitter.
• Nicholas Carr looks at various head-mounted displays and patents granted, thinks about reality augmentation and wonders if “whether they will end up broadening the augmentational capacity of the human eye or narrowing it.”
• The Washington Post visits Gabriel Weinberg, who is fighting Google(s GOOG) with his search startup DuckDuckGo. I am a fan of Gabe and admire what he is doing. It is a tough battle, with more scars than rewards. But that’s what being a startup is all about — changing the status quo.
• Mike Loukides peels the onion on why the Narwhal won and the Orca failed for their respective political campaigns.
• The Telegraph goes to Chengdu in western China and finds yet another tech boom, this time in the hinterlands. (via Paul Kedrosky)