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
January 11, 2010
The New Republic is launching its online book review, “The Book”, today. Looks very good indeed — I’m especially pleased by the inclusion of articles and reviews from the magazine’s illustrious archives. Isaac Chotiner is very concerned that we understand that this is not a dumbed-down or short-attention-span version of the...
January 11, 2010
Brian Croxall wrote a paper for a session at the recent Modern Language Association Convention, but couldn’t be there himself to read it. And that became, in a way, the subject of the paper: Again, I’m not at the MLA this year because it’s not economically feasible. I had hoped to be here for job interviews—as well as to...
January 8, 2010
The “Question of the Year” at Edge is: “How is the Internet changing the way you think?” (Though some parts of the website phrase it differently: “How has the Internet changed the way you think?”) I will be commenting on some of the answers — though not all 159 of them — in the coming days and weeks, but I want to...
January 7, 2010
My meditation on Samuel Johnson — on the three hundredth anniversary of his birth — is now available online.
January 6, 2010
Wonderful post by Tim Carmody over at Snarkmarket about what I think of as a useful new word — or a new use of an already existing word. Someone had said of a piece of information given by someone else, “This story sounded suspiciously Wiki to me.” And as Tim points out, we all know exactly what the person means: The obvious...
January 5, 2010
David Carr is pretty darn excited about Twitter. Now, I enjoy Twitter myself, as I think I’ve made clear — I’m well over 3000 tweets now — but Carr’s enthusiasm is, well, kind of annoying. And his case for the importance of Twitter just isn’t substantive. He writes, And now, nearly a year later, has Twitter turned my...
January 4, 2010
Good advice here, largely from writers, about how to figure out which books in your personal library to get rid of. Aside from Joshua Ferris, who vehemently rejects the idea of eliminating any books from his personal library, the contributors acknowledge that sometimes people run out of room, or are moving somewhere where space will be...
December 31, 2009
When I was six or seven years old I started reading my father’s books, all of which were paperback novels, and almost all of those Westerns and science fiction. I read every novel Louis L’Amour had written before I was ten, and nearly everything by Robert A. Heinlein (I’m not sure I made it through Stranger in a Strange Land). And...
December 30, 2009
In alphabetical order:Instapaper: An amazingly useful app, and by far the best way to read articles of any length on the iPhone. Tilt scrolling is a beautiful thing.Kindle: I have a feeling that one of these days this could render my Kindle useless. If it weren’t for the discomfort that backlighting causes my eyes over long stretches...
December 29, 2009
“Digitized images of rare and beautiful historic books in the biomedical sciences,” here.