Happy New Year, everyone. Like a lot of people I know, I was not sorry to see the back of 2009, a year in which some very unpleasant things–personal, financial, global–occurred. There were good moments, too, which I try to remember to be grateful for–catastrophes narrowly avoided, for instance, and some fiction published. Even though… Continue reading »
Switch-Tasking Toward the Future
At the 2009 WebWise Conference on Museums and Libraries in the Digital Age, held here in D.C. last week, I collected a new term: switch-tasking. Definition? Instead of doing a number of things all at once–multitasking–you rotate among tasks. I haven’t figured out yet whether the difference is more semantic than substantive, but it’s worth… Continue reading »
Meme This
Dear Facebook: I am not my music, even though I sometimes wish I were. I do not want to share 25 random facts about myself with even one other person, much less 139 of them. I do not want you to help me create my Witness Protection Program name. I do not want to know… Continue reading »
Argh. Really.
It not just Emoticon Day, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. Please don’t.
Happy Emoticon Day :)?
Sept. 19, 1982: The electronic smiley face makes its debut. Interpersonal communication will never be the same again.
The “ATM of Books”
The Espresso Book Machine, coming soon to a library near you? In 5-7 minutes, the Espresso will deliver a printed-and-bound copy of any book you like (as long as it’s out of copyright and available in digital form through a collection the machine can access). The Espresso’s manufacturer, On Demand Books*, has big dreams for… Continue reading »
American Culture: Domesticity, Religion, and…Golf?
Yup, if Salman Rushdie, editor of this year’s Best American Short Stories, is to be believed: Q.What do the themes in this year’s best stories show about American culture today? A. There’s clearly an interest in domestic subjects, religious subjects, and, most mysteriously, in the game of golf. But there were enough wilder, more imaginative… Continue reading »
Twittering the Classics
I don’t know about you, but I have been underwhelmed by Twitter as a vehicle for political coverage. Just because everybody’s doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Does “twittering” sound like serious reportage to you? Twittered literature, however–now there’s an idea with legs. Call it twitlit. Maud Newton notes that, so far, we… Continue reading »
Conventional Wisdom
That’s conventional as in conventions, “stultifying media spectacles where no one expects anything to happen.” So says Chris Lehmann in a Q&A posted today by Harper’s. Chris is a senior editor at CQ, the nonfiction editor of Booforum, and a very sharp guy. (He’s also a good friend of mine from my Book World days,… Continue reading »
What Else Does She Do?
From the cover of the September issue of Lucky: “Milla Jovovich gets sexier and sexier.” Hey, it’s a living.
