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
July 8, 2009
There are already a great many blog posts on Google’s announcement of its operating-system-in-progress; probably the most interesting one I’ve seen so far is from John Timmer at Ars Technica. Sample: From a technological perspective, there appear to be some interesting aspects to rethinking the operating system. For one, by...
July 6, 2009
Very likely most of you who are interested have already seen this stuff, but Chris Anderson’s new book Free: the Future of a Radical Price, has been getting some thoughtful attention, most notably from Malcolm Gladwell — but this review from Drake Bennett at the Boston Globe is interesting too. My short take on all this...
July 3, 2009
If you've ever wished that you could have that old HP scientific calculator, but on your iPhone, your wish has come true.
July 3, 2009
Here's Robert Patterson's encrypted letter (1801) to President Thomas Jeferson: The cipher has recently been solved.
July 3, 2009
When I headed for Alabama last week, I knew that my mom didn't have internet access at home. I also knew that there ain't a lot of internet cafés in the area. I figured I would just get a local access number from my ISP and deal with dialup for a few days . . . but then I remembered that my MacBook doesn't have an...
July 1, 2009
My friend David Michael of Wunderkammer fame points out a post by Will Leitch that, well, makes my previous post completely unnecessary. I LOL'd out loud.Leitch points to further commentary here and here.
July 1, 2009
We interrupt this hiatus for this message from your host. The other day I had an email exchange that went something like this: Anon. Why did you say those terrible things about me a few years ago? Me. I didn't. I explained to you at the time that I didn't. [expressions of extreme irritation redacted here and elsewhere] Anon. That...
June 22, 2009
Readers, I am about to decamp for a couple of weeks in the wilds of northern Alabama — “wilds” because my mother lives in the country with no internet access and spotty cell-phone signals. I’ll be reduced to sipping refreshing beverages under the pecan trees and watching Canoe Creek drift by. In other words,...
June 19, 2009
Following up on Farhad Manjoo’s love letter to newspapers: Here is Michael Hirschorn’s mash note to The Economist: For a magazine that effectively blogged avant la lettre, The Economist has never had much digital savvy. It offered a complex mix of free and paid content (rarely a winning strategy) until two years ago and was...
June 19, 2009
Farhad Manjoo on what’s good about reading actual newspapers: But both versions of the Kindle are missing what makes print newspapers such a perfect delivery vehicle for news: graphic design. The Kindle presents news as a list—you're given a list of sections (international, national, etc.) and, in each section, a list of...