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 31, 2010
July 30, 2010
1) If you’re just browsing the web, and don’t need to look at any Flash sites, it’s hard to beat. Fast and smoothly intuitive. You can’t switch pages as quickly as you can switch tabs on a standard web browser, though, which can be a little awkward at times. But the double-tap-to-zoom-text thing, borrowed from the...
July 29, 2010
David Barnett: Well, is it just me, or … look, does anyone else have an unhealthy obsession not just with what people have on their bookshelves but what they’re actually reading right there and then? Does anyone else stare unashamedly at the paperback that is tucked under someone’s arm while they sort through their purse...
July 28, 2010
So, in the next few days I’m going to be working on my syllabi for the upcoming semester. One of my classes is called “Classical and Early British Literature”: it’s one of those big surveys of Western Culture’s Greatest Hits that runs, in this case, from Homer to Shakespeare. Most of the people taking the...
July 28, 2010
One of the coolest applications for the Mac is Notational Velocity, an extraordinarily simple yet also innovative note-taking program. I’ve been using it for the past year or so and really digging its UI: when I want to make a note about something, I use a hotkey combination to activate the program, and then I just start typing. I can...
July 27, 2010
Peggy Nelson: We’ve moved from the etiquette of the individual to the etiquette of the flow. Question: Who are “we”? This is not mob rule, nor is it the fearsome hive mind, the sound of six billion vuvuzelas buzzing. This is not individuals giving up their autonomy or their rational agency. This is individuals choosing to be in...
July 26, 2010
July 26, 2010
There’s a really interesting conversation at Brian Croxall’s site on integrating digital technology into English classes — more particularly, into graduate seminars. Turns out that that it’s hard to think of ways to do this well. And while Brian is anything but a thoughtless technophile, there is something rather telling in how...
July 23, 2010
Folks, just posted is the first of my monthly columns for Big Questions Online. It deals with topics congruent with those of this blog. Please check it out.
July 23, 2010
In a comment to an earlier post that I should have replied to long ago, scritic wrote: But most people don’t have the kind of tastes you do, they don’t want to read Tolstoy and then blog about it; but they do have other interests. So they participate in discussion forums about TV shows, they post pictures to Lolcats or...