on
The City is a Hypertext
And whenever I read anything about the web rewiring our brains, foretelling immanent disaster, I've always thought, geez, people -- we live in cities! Our species has evolved to survive in every climate and environment on dry land. Our brains can handle it!
Same ground that I continue to think about, Georg Simmel &c., but with some new additions.
I like relevance of this
Steve Jobs recently compared the shift from desktop to mobile computers to the shift from trucks to cars. You could maybe say something similar about the future of physical books compared to other kinds of media. The older forms don't go away, but they become more specialized, and the relationships between them become different, as our lifestyles change.
Is it that there is some basic difference in the character of our interactions with e-book readers, for example, something that connects them to a more urban, more alienated mode of existence. I can't at the moment imagine, but it is worth thinking about.
