MachineMachine /stream - tagged with authorship http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com Do Androids Dream of Electric Authors? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/books/review/do-androids-dream-of-electric-authors.html But the invasion of robot-books is unsettling for another reason. I think we can all agree that it’s O.K. for robots to take over unpleasant jobs — like cleaning up nuclear waste. But how could we have allowed them to commandeer one of the most gratifying occupations, that of author? Which brings me back to Lambert M. Surhone. Might he be a robot? Reading the fine print, I traced some of Surhone’s books to a VDM branch office in the island nation of Mauritius, off the coast of Madagascar. I called. As the faraway phone rang, I fantasized about what… ]]> Sun, 16 Oct 2011 07:04:52 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/books/review/do-androids-dream-of-electric-authors.html Mapping The Cracks: Thinking Subjects as Book Objects http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html

In Part One of this article I wrote about the instability of the art-object. How its meaning moves, and inevitably cracks. In this follow-up I ponder text, the book, page and computer screen. Are they as stable as they appear? And how can we set them in motion?

Part Two

"There’s a way, it seems to me, that reality’s fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about... writing about that reality is that text is very linear and it’s very unified, and... I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for…

]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:02:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html Innovative Book Designs http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/136961 Innovative Books: I am looking to compile a list of the most innovative uses of the book format. Books that break the mould in their layout and design, perhaps books that use online systems to extend their content value or push their form into new places. I am most interested in narrative and theory, but any book that is interesting (artist books etc.) would be really appreciated. I have a few examples, in order of publication, to set the ball rolling:

Compendium for literates : a system of writing by Karl Gerstner - A book about book form… ]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:37:00 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/136961 Posthumous Novels by Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Ralph Ellison http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB10001424052970204488304574426921687042050.html After author David Foster Wallace committed suicide last September, his longtime agent, Bonnie Nadell, found herself lost in a maze of words. Scattered on two different computers and in hard copies stashed around the cluttered garage where Mr. Foster Wallace had worked in Claremont, Calif., she discovered multiple versions of his final, unfinished novel. She had no idea which draft he preferred. Mr. Wallace's novel about I.R.S. agents, due out next fall, is being assembled based on the author's notes. "A great deal of it is a puzzle," she said of the novel, titled "Pale King." A new wave of… ]]> Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:05:00 -0700 http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB10001424052970204488304574426921687042050.html