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
April 10, 2009
April 9, 2009
That's what Jason Calcanis calls the lack of empathy, the failure to acknowledge common humanity, that he sees too often in the online world. And yes, he knows that this is an insult to people with Asperger's. See his links and also Catarina Fake's reflections for further details. Whenever someome raises these concerns, there...
April 9, 2009
My title consists of the three traditional guidelines for auricular confession, but it applies in many other situations too. Here's a nice post on academic windbaggery by Mark Bauerlein — though I think it should be said that many (most?) academics never learn the lessons Bauerlein learned as a young scholar, and as they near...
April 9, 2009
Despite the widespread concerns about Google's power over the scanning and distribution of books, I had decided to go ahead and accept the provisional Google Book Settlement — but then I read this letter by Caleb Crain, and I'm going to have to rethink the whole business. The whole situation is starting to seem more...
April 8, 2009
You can see some of the technical challenges involved in the multimedia-digital-book idea by checking this out: an approach to William Blake called “Songs of Imagination and Digitisation.” I love the Future of the Book people, but this just doesn't strike me as a promising endeavor. As I browse through this I get (a)...
April 7, 2009
In the Guardian of London, Henry Porter says that “Google is just an amoral menace.” His evidence? Google presents a far greater threat [than Scribd] to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community. One case emerged last week when a letter from Billy Bragg, Robin Gibb and...
April 6, 2009
Jakob Nielsen says people read first 2 words (11 characters) of online lists or thereabouts (I’m hoping for a longer attention span among TP readers)
April 6, 2009
I’ve written before on this blog that what I like most about the Kindle is the way that its design promotes linear reading. As I see it, the Kindle, far from providing the distractions that webpages and some other screens offer, makes it easy to keep turning the pages. Well, for at least one person, that’s just the problem....
April 2, 2009
Here’s a delightful little essay by Emily Bazelon on her children’s fixation on Star Wars. Bazelon makes a brave attempt to explain this development, but while it’s possible to explain — at least to some degree — why a story is good or interesting or even popular, I doubt that it’s ever possible to...
April 2, 2009
Following this earlier post, here’s another example of visualized criticism. What do the images add to this — what shall we call it — little essay? There aren't many words here. Does that make this analysis superficial? If the space taken up by the images was filled with words instead, would the analysis likely be...