“One of the most surprising advantages to reading on an iPad is the ability to read without having to hold the book in your hands. After years of wrestling with books which won’t lay down flat at the dining table, it’s been a great pleasure to put my iPad in front of me and only have to use one finger to advance a page. This is also true in bed, where it takes at least two hands (if not three) to read a hardback book-one or two to hold the book and another to turn the page.”
Said Bob Stein. No he didn’t. He said it in 1995 about his Powerbook. From the Feed-archives: http://www.feedmag.com/templates/old_article.php3?a_id=1230
Carel Peters denkt dat ik de bedenker van de schrijfwijze ‘Re:publiek der Letteren’ ben. Als hij een beetje had gegoogled (echt onderzoek was niet nodig) dan had hij kunnen weten dat ik dat niet ben.
(De rest heb ik overigens nog niet gelezen). Premature reactie alhier, dus.
http://www.vn.nl/…forum=1272.
Virtual Reality (.com)
Cyberspace (.com)
A few things I’ve been checking out:
Graham Harman’s : The Prince of Networks, Bruno Latour and Metaphysics; Bernhard Stiegler’s Technics and Time (difficult to read); a short list of Simondon’s terminology at Fractal Ontology; and different text-editors for Mac, after reading Jacket’s styleguide, or spot-on long explanation of what the f— it means to edit a text in these times.
GEORGE DYSON
Science Historian; Author, Darwin Among the Machines
KAYAKS vs CANOES
“In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.
The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.
I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be left paddling logs, not canoes.”
Copypasted from Egde 2010
I love the idea of ‘audience’. I believe in the role of the editor.
This is of course what should happen:
“The most ambitious solution would transform Google’s digital database into a truly public library. That, of course, would require an act of Congress, one that would make a decisive break with the American habit of determining public issues by private lawsuit.”
See Robert Darnton’s article in the NYRB: Google and the New Digital Future
I’m afraid it won’t happen. Never.
Think about his too, having it done in another way:
“… with none of the missing pages, botched images, faulty editions, omitted artwork, censoring, and misconceived cataloging that mar Google’s enterprise. Bibliographers—who appear to play little or no part in Google’s enterprise—would direct operations along with computer engineers. Librarians would cooperate with both in order to assure the preservation of the books, another weak point in GBS, because Google is not committed to maintaining its corpus, and digitized texts easily degrade or become inaccessible.”
Kimberley Spreeuwenberg (designer of Gonzo Circus, MA student at the University of Amsterdam) wrote an entry for Arie Altena on Wikipedia, and wrote a blogpost analyzing that process: http://kspreeuwenberg.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/a-wiki-noob/.
Ah, I’m here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arie_Altena.
Putting data back, re-downloading software, disciplining applications and the general behavior of the computer. I have my MacBook back.
Eindelijk online, De Reactor, platform voor literaire kritiek: http://www.dereactor.org/. (Of ik zie het nu pas).
