MachineMachine /stream - tagged with writing http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Never go with a cultist to a second location http://www.metafilter.com/110638/Never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter/never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location-metafilter Alan Moore talks about HP Lovecraft, The Courtyard and Neonomicon (audio) http://t.co/IZyHeXiW ]]> Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:05:45 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/110638/Never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter/never-go-with-a-cultist-to-a-second-location-metafilter All Language Is Murder http://www.vice.com/read/language-is-murder/all-language-is-murder-vice The Word is the Murder of the Thing http://t.co/Y1H5W9zS ]]> Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:50:14 -0700 http://www.vice.com/read/language-is-murder/all-language-is-murder-vice Worth a new Mass? http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2011/12/worth-a-new-mass.html/the-tls-blog-worth-a-new-mass Worth a new Mass? "How should seminal texts from the remote past be translated in a contemporary idiom?" http://t.co/K8ek35Lh ]]> Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:06:14 -0700 http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2011/12/worth-a-new-mass.html/the-tls-blog-worth-a-new-mass Tom McCarthy: My desktop http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/24/tom-mccarthy-desktop?mobile-redirect=false I must belong to the only generation of writers who've written with all three of inkpen, typewriter and computer. It definitely matters: the technology colours not only the rhythm but the whole logic of what you write. Think of Kafka's obsession with writing machines: the harrow that inscribes the law onto the skin in In the Penal Colony or the mysterious writing desk in Amerika: writing technologies themselves are imbued with terrifying and sacred dimensions, and become the subject, not just the medium, of the story. I used to have a beautiful old German typewriter, that you had to throw… ]]> Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:34:28 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/24/tom-mccarthy-desktop?mobile-redirect=false VideoGames can't tell stories http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories Games don’t do storytelling well because they can’t deliver the four key components of story. There is no hero. Time is in the control of the player, not the creator. There is no inevitability or sense of being powerless. And the story cannot have the player’s full attention. So a videogame Hamlet is just a guy running around a castle flipping switches and collecting items to kill his uncle, the big boss at the end. All those speeches just get in the way. The player is not treading the boards at the Old Vic. He’s solving problems, taking action, creating… ]]> Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:53:57 -0700 http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories Zombie Editions: An Archaeology of POD Areopagiticas http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2010/12/zombie-editions-archaeology-of-pod.html This is a zombie edition, one of many I found for early modern texts on Amazon. Produced as cheap print-on-demand editions from EEBO or GoogleBook scans, they're listed alongside reputable scholarly print editions published by university presses, indistinguishable at first glance except for a few glaring markers. Like a mismatched cover image -- -- or excessively expressive titles: Closer examination reveals their undead status. In the case of English Reprints Jhon Milton Areopagitica, the publisher is the aptly-named BiblioLife, a project of BiblioLabs, which designs software "to address the challenges of cost-effectively bringing old books back to life." (BiblioLabs takes… ]]> Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:06:15 -0700 http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2010/12/zombie-editions-archaeology-of-pod.html 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 Music moved on after modernism, but whatever happened to fiction? http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/oct/05/notes-letters-music-modernism-self The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage. At the securely comfortable end of the emotional spectrum we have those zeniths of song, the German lieder tradition, and high opera. In the best examples of both forms words and music appear utterly and indissolubly comingled. However, at the other end of this spectrum we have those kinds of music that attempt to be literary – so-called programme music – and those forms of literature that attempt, either through descriptive representation… ]]> Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:54:22 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/oct/05/notes-letters-music-modernism-self Innovation Starvation http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation SF has changed over the span of time I am talking about—from the 1950s (the era of the development of nuclear power, jet airplanes, the space race, and the computer) to now. Speaking broadly, the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a generally darker, more skeptical and ambiguous tone. I myself have tended to write a lot about hackers—trickster archetypes who exploit the arcane capabilities of complex systems devised by faceless others. ]]> Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:47:54 -0700 http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation Innovative websites as template for MFA research community http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/196170 I'm looking for examples of websites that have successfully enhanced a research community (academic or artistic) with a dynamic online/social/mutual-portfolio presence. Blog and social media based hubs, perhaps, that showcase the possibilities of web portfolio/research integration for academic and creative purposes. I've been asked to help implement a website/blogging platform for a community of 20 MFA students.

Basically I'd like to gather up some examples of dynamic websites attached to academia (or similar i.e. the arts). These examples will be then passed on to my superiors with an eye to developing our own platform that takes the best… ]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:26:18 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/196170 Novelists Predict Future With Eerie Accuracy http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy-nytimescom "The dirty little secret of speculative fiction is that it’s hard to go wrong predicting things will get worse" : http://t.co/Qxb6kZh #x ]]> Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:12:49 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy-nytimescom Reading Life - What We Do to Books http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/reading-life-what-we-do-to-books.html There has always been a lot of discussion about the effect that reading books has on us. Far less attention has been paid to the effect that we (the readers) have on them (the books). I don’t mean on the reputations or royalties of the authors who wrote the books but on the actual physical objects themselves. As a kid I borrowed books from libraries. When I was a student I often bought used books, some with other people’s annotations in pencil. These could be erased, but I occasionally settled for a book with the previous owner’s name and notes… ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:08:09 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/reading-life-what-we-do-to-books.html Reading Life - What We Do to Books http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/reading-life-what-we-do-to-books.html There has always been a lot of discussion about the effect that reading books has on us. Far less attention has been paid to the effect that we (the readers) have on them (the books). I don’t mean on the reputations or royalties of the authors who wrote the books but on the actual physical objects themselves.

As a kid I borrowed books from libraries. When I was a student I often bought used books, some with other people’s annotations in pencil. These could be erased, but I occasionally settled for a book with the previous owner’s… ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:32:05 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/reading-life-what-we-do-to-books.html How to write faster. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine http://www.slate.com/id/2301243/pagenum/all/how-to-write-faster-by-michael-agger-slate-magazine Slowpoke: How to be a faster writer (or 'how to write faster') - http://t.co/MCpEcFZ #science #writing #x #slate ]]> Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:11:46 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2301243/pagenum/all/how-to-write-faster-by-michael-agger-slate-magazine Content-free prose: The latest threat to writing or the next big thing? http://blog.oup.com/2011/07/content-free-prose/ There’s a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs—present company included—don’t escape their wrath. But in fact the opposite is true: thanks to computers, writing is thriving. More people are writing more than ever, and this new wave of everyone’s-an-author bodes well for the future of writing, even if not all that makes its way online is interesting or high in quality.

But two new digital developments, ebook spam and content farms, now threaten the survival of writing as we know it. ]]> Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:46:50 -0700 http://blog.oup.com/2011/07/content-free-prose/ Thoughts on art practice PhDs http://www.fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/thoughts-on-art-practice-phds

“Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.”

- Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

What are artists to gain from taking a PhD? How does the mantle of ‘artistic research’ enable art objects and those invested in them? And where does art’s autonomy reside when its criticality comes from within an academic institution?

Over the last 20 years art has eased its way into academia. Past the door of the artist’s studio and… ]]> Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:58:04 -0700 http://www.fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/thoughts-on-art-practice-phds Off-putting behaviour: On Writing and Procrastination http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jul/05/procrastination-al-kennedy When I began writing, distractions were all low-tech. I had to worry about typewriter ribbons and correction fluid, for God's sake. There was no possibility of spending an apparently productive day making backup files, defragmenting already tidy hard drives, emailing, watching grainy online movies of cats falling over, or playing virtual patience. (I once tried a more sophisticated computer game and, after many months, managed to advance my character by one level and put him into a loop of crouching, rocking and saying, "Oh, no.") Nevertheless, I could still burn away whole pre-Amstrad weekends in keeping busy, rather than writing.… ]]> Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:52:34 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jul/05/procrastination-al-kennedy Georges Bataille, The Solar Anus http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7233736409 “All things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.”

- Georges Bataille, The Solar Anus ]]> Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:02:43 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/7233736409 The Things, by Peter Watts http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

The names don't matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair. MacReady has told me to burn Blair if… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:13:19 -0700 http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/ Post-Artifact Books and Publishing http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/ We will always debate:
the quality of the paper, the pixel density of the display;
the cloth used on covers, the interface for highlighting;
location by page, location by paragraph.

But really, who cares? 3

Hunting surface analogs between the printed and the digital book is a dangerous honeypot. There is a compulsion to believe the magic of a book lies in its surface.

In reality, the book worth considering consists only of relationships. Relationships between ideas and recipients. Between writer and reader. Between readers and other readers… ]]> Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:50:47 -0700 http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/