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 25, 2014
This talk by Matthew Kirschenbaum provokes much thought, and I might want to come back to some of its theses about software. But for now I’d just like to call attention to his reflections on George R. R. Martin’s choice of writing software: On May 13, in conversation with Conan O’Brien, George R. R. Martin, author of course...
July 24, 2014
I just got back from a brief vacation at Big Bend National Park, and when I was packing I made sure to stick a novel in my backpack. I’m not going to name it, but it is a very recent novel, by a first-time novelist, that has received a great deal of praise. Before my departure I had already read the first chapter and found it quite...
July 17, 2014
FOTB (Friends Of This Blog), I have a request for you. This fall I’m teaching a first-year seminar for incoming Honors College students, and our topic is the Two Cultures of the sciences and the humanities. We’ll begin by exploring the lecture by C. P. Snow that kicked off the whole debate — or rather, highlighted and intensified a...
July 17, 2014
In light of the conversation we were having the other day, here is some new information: The shift from print to digital reading may lead to more than changes in speed and physical processing. It may come at a cost to understanding, analyzing, and evaluating a text. Much of Mangen’s research focusses on how the format of reading...
July 16, 2014
This talk by Bethany Nowviskie is extraordinary. If you have any interest in where the digital humanities — or the humanities more generally — might be headed, I encourage you to read it. It’s a very wide-ranging talk that doesn’t articulate a straightforward argument, but that’s intentional, I believe. It’s meant to...
July 16, 2014
Naomi Baron thinks it’s really problematic in academic contexts: What’s the problem? Not all reading works well on digital screens. For the past five years, I’ve been examining the pros and cons of reading on-screen versus in print. The bottom line is that while digital devices may be fine for reading that we don’t intend to...
July 11, 2014
Here’s a typically smart and provocative reflection by Andrew Piper. But I also have a question about it. Consider this passage: Wieseltier’s campaign is just the more robust clarion call of subtler and ongoing assumptions one comes across all the time, whether in the op-eds of major newspapers, blogs of cultural reviews, or the...
July 7, 2014
Another candidate for Worst Defense of Facebook, this one from Duncan Watts of Microsoft Research: Yes, the arrival of new ways to understand the world can be unsettling. But as social science starts going through the kind of revolution that astronomy and chemistry went through 200 years ago, we should resist the urge to attack the...
July 5, 2014
Bibliotecha is a remarkably successful new Kickstarter project for designing and printing a Bible made to be read, in multiple volumes and with bespoke type design. Here is the Kickstarter page; here is part one of an interview with Adam Lewis Greene, the designer; and here is the second part of that interview. Lots and lots of things to...
July 4, 2014
In his recent and absolutely essential book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt tries to understand why we disagree with one another — especially, but not only, about politics and religion — and, more important, why it is so hard for people to see those who disagree with them as equally intelligent, equally decent human beings. (See...