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
May 13, 2011
Matt Henderson showed his kids Al Gore’s Our Choice: My kids — 10 and 8 years old — are both avid readers. The absolutely devour every book they can find. And, they are both intimately familiar with the iPad. My 10 year-old, in fact, reads many of her books in the iPad’s Kindle app, and often likes to write summaries of when...
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011
At the always-wonderful Letters of Note, some lovely responses from writers asked to tell the children of Troy, Michigan what’s good about a library. My favorite response is E. B. White’s, tinged as it is with that gentle melancholy that characterizes most of his writing and that children responded to surprisingly well: A library is...
May 10, 2011
Via Nick Carr, a really interesting forthcoming paper on how students read using the Kindle DX. Some findings: • Students did most of the reading in fixed locations: 47 percent of reading was at home, 25 percent at school, 17 percent on a bus and 11 percent in a coffee shop or office. • The Kindle DX was more likely to replace...
May 9, 2011
I’ve written more than once about my troubles with Tumblr, but people keep writing to tell me that they miss those links and quotes. So how about this: I’ve made my Pinboard bookmarks public (well, most of them anyway). This gives you a tag-based collection of all sorts of things that I’m reading, have recently read,...
May 7, 2011
Next academic year I will be leading a faculty seminar here at Wheaton on Christianity and the Book: Histories and Futures. Participating in the seminar will be faculty from English, Education, Chemistry, Ancient Languages, Communications, and the Library. Oh, and our President wants to be there too. We’ll want to start the year by...
May 6, 2011
In the New Statesman, A. C. Goodall writes that Twitter is really bad. She doesn’t make any arguments, she just says stuff. “Twitter is all about fitting in.” “Twitter functions as banally as a school hierarchy: who to like, who not to, who you’re allowed to criticise, who you can’t etc.” “Twitter relies on...
May 5, 2011
Yes, not a lot of activity around here lately, I know. End of semester craziness. I’ll be more active in the coming weeks — though, I must note, this blog will be quietish through most of the summer, as I will be leading (with my buddy and colleague Brett Foster) a study tour in England from mid-June through early August....
May 4, 2011
Here’s an odd post by Gina Barreca about a student of hers whose completely un-backed-up computer died. Everything was lost: documents of all kinds, photos, email, etc. Barreca’s response: See, this is why you should print everything out. (Everything? Even the photos?) Barreca says she pays for a backup service, though she...