Commentary on technologies of reading, writing, research, and, generally, knowledge. As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered? And, not least, what’s fun?
By: Alan Jacobs
October 26, 2009
. . . Look, I’m not saying there’s nothing good about it. That it’s just one book, so if you lose it you’re only out a few bucks, that’s nice. That you don’t have to worry about charging the batteries, that’s very nice. And in the relatively few books that have illustrations, the difference is...
October 23, 2009
It’s interesting that the NYT today ran one story about people who refuse to have cellphones and another story about people who want to escape being always connected to the Internet. This meme has been building for some time, but I wonder if the curve is about to turn more sharply upward. Still more, I wonder whether it will amount...
October 23, 2009
I tweeted a while back my sense that I should post something about this conversation about e-books and the future of reading, but all I have time for right now is a quote from David Gelernter’s contribution: I assume that technology will soon start moving in the natural direction: integrating chips into books, not vice versa. I might...
October 22, 2009
Last Tuesday evening I attended a lecture by Walter Hooper, the long-time prime custodian of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate. He was narrating the history of his involvement with Lewis’s writings, focusing especially on all the editing he has done — editing for which all who have worked on Lewis, present company included, owe...
October 22, 2009
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a great, great book — not a simple book, not a flawless book, not a book without pathologies, but a truly great book. It is one of my real privileges to be able to teach it every year. But if you’re feeling a bit intimidated by that forbidding masterpiece, maybe you could acquaint yourself with it...
October 21, 2009
Tyler Cowen in the Wilson Quarterly: Many critics charge that multitasking makes us less efficient. Researchers say that periodically checking your e-mail lowers your cognitive performance level to that of a drunk. If such claims were broadly correct, multitasking would pretty rapidly disappear simply because people would find that it...
October 21, 2009
The notion of a “forgotten literary treasure” is a complicated one. No such book is forgotten by everyone, so when we say that a forgotten book shold be remembered, what we really mean is that, however well-known it happens to be, it ought to be much better known. With that caveat in mind, let me mention two (relatively...
October 21, 2009
From a working library: The first definition is the most familiar: one who reads, or one who is fond of reading. A young girl tucked under a tree with a book in hand; an old man waiting for the bus, nose pressed into the spine; three little boys sitting on the curb sharing a newspaper, ink smudged on their knees.The second definition...
October 20, 2009
October 19, 2009
Michael Chabon: In the world of Legos, what I did discover is that my kids were taking these beautiful, gorgeous, incredibly restrictive predetermined Legos Star Wars play sets — and yeah, they really wanted it to be put together just the way the box showed it. I don’t think it occurred to them you’d want to do anything...