http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://thebrowser.com/articles/e-books-cant-burn/e-books-cant-burn-best-of-the-moment-the-browser E-books Can't Burn: Could it be that ebooks bring us closer to the essence of the literary experience? @nybooks http://t.co/IMoUdFtP ]]> Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:50:20 -0700 http://thebrowser.com/articles/e-books-cant-burn/e-books-cant-burn-best-of-the-moment-the-browser http://canopycanopycanopy.com/11/the_font_of_the_hand JUST AS IN OUR DAY a fervid minority denounces the digitization of literary experience, fifteenth-century literati responded to their own depredations. In 1492, Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote De Laude Scriptorum, "In Praise of Scribes,” a polemic addressed to Gerlach, Abbot of Deutz. Trithemius’s intention was to uphold scribal preeminence while denouncing the temptations of the emerging press: “The printed book is made of paper and, like paper, will quickly disappear. But the scribe working with parchment ensures lasting remembrance for himself and for his text.” Trithemius asserted that movable type was no substitute for solitary transcription, as the… ]]> Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:23:39 -0700 http://canopycanopycanopy.com/11/the_font_of_the_hand http://www.slate.com/id/2258054 Because we perceive print and electronic media differently. Because Marshall McLuhan was right about some things.

In case you don't recall one of the more influential thinkers of the late 20th century: McLuhan was an academic media theorist who ended up being called a "high priest of popular culture." He was big enough to be a standing joke on Laugh-In ("Marshall McLuhan, what are you doin'?") to appear in a cameo in Annie Hall, to get interviewed in Playboy. One of the fundamental things McLuhan said was that new media change us and change the world. We… ]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:21:00 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2258054 http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2010/03/against_writingthis_progress.html Buried in the middle of Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, a book digressive in exactly the right way, is an astonishing argument about writing. Lévi-Strauss considers what the invention of writing might mean in the history of civilizations worldwide, arriving at a conclusion that still surprises:

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. Such, as any rate, is the typical pattern of development to be observed from Egypt… ]]> Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:11:00 -0700 http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2010/03/against_writingthis_progress.html http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker?currentPage=all ordered a Kindle 2 from Amazon. How could I not? There were banner ads for it all over the Web. Whenever I went to the Amazon Web site, I was urged to buy one. “Say Hello to Kindle 2,” it said, in tall letters on the main page. If I looked up a particular writer on Amazon—Mary Higgins Clark, say—and then reached the page for her knuckle-gnawer of a novel “Moonlight Becomes You,” the top line on the page said, “ ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ and over 270,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle—Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more.”… ]]> Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:43:00 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker?currentPage=all http://www.thing.net/~grist/lnd/hp-book.htm by Harry Polkinhorn - To arrive at a theoretical understanding of artists' books, it is perhaps best to begin, as Richard Kostelanetz points out in his essay entitled "Book Art," on a formal note: "artists' books" are those book-like objects made by visual/literary artists which treat the book form as an artistic genre comprised of dynamic sets of tactile/graphic as well as literary potentials. A (false) contrast is suggested with "writers' books," thus underscoring the futility of trying to classify art objects solely from the point of view of the "initial profession (or education)" [1] of their makers. Since a… ]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:25:00 -0700 http://www.thing.net/~grist/lnd/hp-book.htm