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 8, 2010
Michael Grothaus: After finishing my read of the novel on both mediums — the iPad and the paperback — I am more convinced than ever that the iPad and its iBookstore will not usurp traditional print editions. A paperback is just a too versatile and easy device to read from. It’s cheap and replaceable and takes a very low level...
May 7, 2010
Long before Brian Phillips did me the great honor of allowing me to post a thought or two on his site, I expressed my great admiration for his marvelously evocative (and often really, really funny) writing on his blog about soccer, The Run of Play. In a turn of events that’s pretty close to being too-good-to-be-true, Brian is...
May 7, 2010
My New Atlantis colleague Ari Schulman has already called our attention to the neuro lit crit debate. All of the entries in that little NYT symposium are worth reading, but there’s one significant issue that no one mentions: that literary criticism grounded in cognitive science resembles most other theoretical approaches in being...
May 6, 2010
Kara Swisher tells us that personal computing is about to get a lot more personal. Internet-based television now in development will recognize a viewer and deliver customized entertainment.And it will do this without the trusty keyboard and mouse. We’re already phasing them out, thanks to the increasing popularity of touch screens...
May 6, 2010
Here’s a wonderful interview — alas, too brief — with Alberto Manguel. Some choice bits: I don’t think the book of paper and ink will disappear, as long as we allow for technologies to coexist. The notion that one must replace the other is simply the urge of the new to exist alone on the planet, but it doesn’t happen. ....
May 6, 2010
The best interpreters of any given text are those whose ideas — whether you agree with them or not — send you back with excitement to that text.
May 5, 2010
May 4, 2010
Is Neil Gaiman’s American Gods a good choice for the One Book, One Twitter event/bookclub/opinionfest? Gaiman himself isn’t so sure, though he will participate in good spirit, and is even willing to tweet answers to readers’ questions when it’s all done.To my own surprise, I find that I very much like the idea of a group of...
May 4, 2010
Jeannette M. Wing describes “computational thinking” in this PDF: Consider these everyday examples: When your daughter goes to school in the morning, she puts in her backpack the things she needs for the day; that’s prefetching and caching. When your son loses his mittens, you suggest he retrace his steps; that’s backtracking. At...
May 3, 2010
I’ve just discovered a cool thing at Tor.com, the website of the SF/fantasy publisher: blogs devoted to chapter-by-chapter re-readings of classic fantasy works. There’s one on The Lord of the Rings and one on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. The idea tends to be a little better than the execution, which is sometimes rather...