And another stereotype bites the dust. The language mavens are getting feistier, siccing hit squads on people who annoy them, in this case those who post items saying how ending a sentence with a preposition is okay, pace gangs of tsking grammarians from another age roaming our streets. The problem is, say the Language Log hosts, they get the same darned thing, again and again, and they’re sick of it. From now on, in fact, offenders will themselves be … Read more
books
Crack-crazed butterflies in rampant botanical garden
The future of the book
“Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch global design and innovation consultancy IDEO’s vision for the future of the book. What new experiences might be created by linking diverse discussions, what additional value could be created by connected readers to one another, and what innovative ways we might use to tell our favorite stories and build community around books?”
1. Alice. To say I resemble a Ludditic old fart is … Read more
E-readers need serendipity buttons
One burning issue du jour concerns the relative merits of Kindles and iPads. But rarely, now, does discussion swing around to the real advantages of traditional paper books.
If only paper books could perform word searches, eh? How I wished for the missing function when I went looking for a passage I dimly remembered reading somewhere—something to the effect that night air was sweating the fragrance of jasmine. I wanted to use something dangerously similar in a story I was … Read more
Things fall apart redux
I sit in my office sweating.
The 27-inch iMac gazes blankly at me from inside its raincoat, the pair of us waiting for the air-conditioner repairmen to arrive. It all started when my old PC laptop clapped out, exposing me to attack by the consumerist virus waiting in ambush. Next thing I knew, I was the proudish owner of a nearly-new iMac super doodah. And now look. The world is disintegrating.
Long-slumbering volcano erupts in Sumatra. Floods in Pakistan, India … Read more
Blacksmiths & blockheads? “Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature”
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” (reported by Boswell, in his Life of Johnson)
Attributed to Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the renowned author and lexicographer, that’s one of the most famous writerly aphorisms in the English language.
Others have seen things differently.
Arthur Schopenhauer, for one (1788-1860), had this to say about the matter:
“There are above all two kinds of writer: those who write for the sake of what they have to say and … Read more
Blacksmiths & novelists revisited: The Scott Adams Theory of Content Value
Collin’s not the only one comparing professional writers to blacksmiths, these days. Scott Adams, e.g, of “Dilbert” fame, presents his Adams Theory of Content Value: “As our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.”
The fate of the author in the age of digital gizmodery (with apologies to Scott Adams):
Among other things, Adams predicts “that the profession known as ‘author’ will be retired to history in my lifetime, … Read more
Unemployed Blacksmiths and Novelists Support Group
It was all foretold in Finnegans Wake. It could have been, anyway.
There’s just no end to human ingenuity. Now you don’t even have to buy an e-book reader to suffer Internet interconnectivity. Ubimark has developed a way for readers to evoke Web connections from a print book by way of cellphone camera and browser. Have a look at the following item (short article & video), “Putting the Web inside the printed book.”
Ubimark, iPads and Vooks … Read more
Apocalyptic cosmophobia
Jack, here. Looking back at the earlier exchange (22 April 2010) between Collin, S. Tsow and “Osho”—and then looking at Collin’s notion (today) that the iPad will end human existence as we’ve known it—I reckon the following is apropos.
Apocalyptic cosmophobia.
Just roll that one around on your tongue. A genuine cocktail party conversation stopper. DAVE BERRY HAS PROBABLY ALREADY USED IT TO NAME A NEW ROCK BAND.
Apocalyptic cosmophobia may first have been used to refer to popular readings … Read more
From absent presence to omnipresence: “I am my iPhone” (local DTAC slogan) to “We are my iPad”
In Thailand, the iPad mostly remains a rumor of digital utopia on the other side of the world. But travelers to those distant parts are beginning to arrive back here with their über-gadgets.
And they are harbingers of epidemic social change. These carriers of the current Digital Grail—and soon, I suspect, they’ll include everybody in the world with a few hundred dollars to spend—behave as though they carry new-born children, and they’re prone to dropping these items on the … Read more
More universes
I see Jack is touting Bill Page’s book The Nirvana Experiments (which is in a state of suspension, publication-wise, prospective publishers please note).
Coincidentally, given my last post regarding this universe, possible other ones, and connections between them, Bill reviewed Dawkins’ The God Delusion recently, and I’ve abstracted the following passage:
[T]o his credit, Dawkins defines his terms clearly. He is attacking what he calls the God Hypothesis: The belief that “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed… Read more