The Typewriter (In the 21st Century)

It would be nice--in a way--to believe that the typewriter has a future, but, heck, I am beginning to wonder if the ballpoint pen has a future. But, if I lived in a place where I could take my Underwood Standard in to a repair shop and get it working again, I probably would. And, then...

William Gibson Interview

William Gibson interview: Boing Boing exclusive – Boing Boing

What things are keeping your interest lately? The sheer surreality of the Republican presidential primary, Libya, Iain Sinclair's monolithic ongoing anti-Olympics project (Hackney, That Rose Red Empire and now Ghost Milk), the "gray man" concept in personal security, the culture of personal aerial drones, parts of the United States as newly undeveloped sub-nations and the foreign outsourcing thereof...

Teaching Writing

Heavy Sentences

First day of class I used to tell students that I could not teach them to be observant, to love language, to acquire a sense of drama, to be critical of their own work, or almost anything else of significance that comprises the dear little demanding art of putting proper words in their proper places. I didn’t bring it up, lest I discourage them completely, but I certainly could not help them to gain either character or an interesting point of view. All I could do, really, was point out their mistakes, and, as someone who had read much more than they, show them several possibilities about deploying words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, of which they might have been not have been aware. Hence the Zenish koan with which I began: writing cannot be taught, but it can be learned.

New Strategy for Orphan Works

What is the Orphan Works Project?
The Orphan Works Project is being led by the Copyright Office of the University of Michigan Library to identify orphan works. Orphan works are books that are subject to copyright but whose copyright holders cannot be identified or contacted. Our immediate focus is on digital books held by HathiTrust, a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future.

a theory of university: one of two answers

I could have answered the question in a different way. I could have said, “You’re reading these books because they teach you things about the world and yourself that, if you do not learn them in college, you are unlikely to learn anywhere else.” This reflects a different theory of college, a theory that runs like this: In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest personal or financial rewards, people will, given a choice, learn only what they need to know for success. They will have no incentive to acquire the knowledge and skills important for life as an informed citizen, or as a reflective and culturally literate human being. College exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing.

The theory of university as a sort of indoctrination, and the encounters that students have with knowledge is planned around a number of challenging situations or topics or ideas. Frye said that all learning involves overcoming personal barriers, and this idea of education is about this type of barrier-encountering. The point is that it will not be pleasant or fun--at least some of the time--some of the time it will be exactly what the student does not want. Other times it will be exciting and even blissful.

A real typewriter

Poet, novelist, dramatist, ballad singer and house-painter Brendan Behan at work in the early 60s/

The end of the typewriter

Paul Bailey in the Guardian

News has come in recently that Godrej and Boyce, a long-established firm of typewriter producers based in Mumbai, have a mere 500 manual typewriters left in stock. Once these have been sold, or disposed of, they will switch to making refrigerators instead. There is, apparently, a small demand still for electric typewriters in America, particularly in schools and prisons. One can understand why the latter could make use of them, since the time hasn't come for prisoners to access porn on a humble piece of office equipment. But these are clearly the last of a dying breed.

I have my old typewriter in my office, but should I keep it there, now just a museum piece?
Museums that contain objects of use from the past or that are in fact the houses of people that display the study of the person as it was left—with the typewriter, for example—show the way that such objects are meaningless unless they are used. They are like the kitchen wood stove without a fire in the stove. They are like the bowl and rolling pin without the live ingredients which bring the objects to life.
What one has is like the skeleton of the animal rather than the animal itself. And in this way photographs, for example, are better, so long as they contain the trace of the human. So the contemporary photograph of the writer’s typewriter is meaningless—it is just a picture of an old typewriter. But the photograph of the typewriter on the writer’s lap or with the writer’s hand or with a fresh piece of paper that will actually be typed on a few seconds after the photo is taken, this is alive in a different way.

man of the crowd

I have been sick for the past week, and the weather has been terrible. Today, after working for part of the morning, I just had to get out, so I came here--to Starbucks...coffee too strong and food too greasy and pasty. But I just needed to sit here, even if I am just looking out the window at the rain, even if I am still not fully recovered. Suddenly, I had a flash of recognition...

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the large bow window of the D -- -- Coffee House in London. For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui -- moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs -- the _____ -- and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its everyday condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in everything. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. "The Man of the Crowd" Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

But, this is not London and the crowds passing are mostly cars in the rain.

Book and other piracy -- research needed

Research needed

Publishers need more research (and more nuanced research) about the impact of book piracy in order to have a more informed perspective on how to approach it.

People pirate for many reasons. Some do it simply for the love of pirating. Some people amass large collections of movies and music and books that they may never watch, listen to, or read. Others pirate because they feel they simply can't afford to pay. These types of pirates are probably the hardest to convert into paying customers.

Novelty Seeking research

Novelty seeking

is one of four aspects that Dr. Cloninger and many other psychologists propose as the basic bricks of normal temperament, the other three being avoidance of harm, reward dependence and persistence. All four humors are thought to be attributable in good part to one's genetic makeup -- the predisposition that one is dealt at birth. They are the aspects of human nature that mark one person as a pessimistic worrywart, another as an outgoing team player.

Temperament remains fairly stable throughout life, Dr. Cloninger said, which means the shy and anxious boy is likely to be the shy and anxious grandfather, though psychiatric drugs, intense counseling or life-changing experiences can modify some aspects of temperament.

Any one person may have a mixture of varying degrees of the four temperamental dimensions. For example, a novelty seeker may have a low quotient of harm avoidance, not fretting over dangers real or imagined; a high level of persistence, and a high level of reward dependence, and so cares about making some sort of impact or statement.

Such an individual could serve as a poster person for achievement, the type with the self-confidence, optimism and originality to do something brilliant in life, assuming his or her great temperament was combined with great talent.

Alternatively, a novelty seeker who is low in reward dependence and low in harm avoidance may care little for friends or society and end up an aloof alcoholic.

London in 1825

London 1825
Population: 1,335,000

While the British Empire was flung around the globe bringing in immense wealth for a small portion of England, London, was largely a slum in 1825.
And crime was rampant. Not until four years after the city reached the record for being the most populous in the world did government activate a full time police force.

Information relevant to the London De Quincey described in 1821, and Pierce Egan in Life in London.

Writing ... typing ... keyboarding

What we lost in the switch

I contemplate the differences between writing tools -- Scrivener vs. Microsoft Word vs. this little Moveable Type box -- because I do notice a difference in what come out of them. Scrivener, a James Fallows favorite, makes it easy to break up your writing into tidy compartments that sit in a sidebar on the left side of your screen. In the first few months I tried it out. But I found it made my writing too choppy, as I refined each section without reference to the whole. There is something about the never-ending scroll of the Word document that I like, and not just because I bought into the Kerouac mythology. (OK, it is because I bought into the Kerouac mythology.)

I still worry about this, but I find it so difficult now to take the time to write things longhand.

data loss

I am trying to understand the phenomenon of decay of information that could be seen as data loss, although this is not how the term is defined by Wikipedia (data loss). It is not an intentional or accidental loss or destruction of data. What I am thinking of is more like the loss that occurs when a digital music file is saved in a lower bit rate or when an analogue sound gets clipped in the process of digitizing.
I suspect that the same is true of information and especially of ideas. The process of encoding them in a way that enables them to be disseminated on the web--or that encourages their dissemination--requires a loss of complexity or detail. The sharp edges get knocked off, and the parts that require more processing are left out.
The result is a flattening of experience, dulling of senses and of the intellect. It leaves one satisfied, in a way, and yet empty, in another way. In a world of ubiquitous information one seeks more information, one seeks something new, not predigested, not already worn down.

The Airport and J. G. Ballard

Going somewhere? AIRPORTS By J.G. Ballard
[The Observer 14/9/97]

at an airport such as Heathrow the individual is defined, not by the tangible ground mortgaged into his soul for the next 40 years, but the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers trembling on an annunciator screen. We are no longer citizens with civic obligations, but passengers for whom all destinations are theoretically open, our lightness of baggage mandated by the system. Airports have become a new kind of discontinuous city, whose vast populations, measured by annual passenger throughputs, are entirely transient, purposeful and, for the most part, happy. An easy camaraderie rules the departure lounges, along with the virtual abolition of nationality - whether we are Scots or Japanese is far less important than where we are going. I've long suspected that people are only truly happy and aware of a real purpose to their lives when they hand over their tickets at the check-in.

Airports are a number of things to Ballard. The individual is intransit, defined not by nationality, or possessions, but by "the indeterminate flicker of flight numbers". But airports are also the "discontinuous city," the city of the transient, the deracinated. Here, Ballard believes, people are "truly happy."

But here one is also the observer of the crowds who flow forever and who are always just passersby. They are never neighbours, or property owners, or people with some claim to anonymity or privacy. They are by definition random and unpredictable. Specific types or events or attitudes or experiences cannot be anticipated. The passengers offer the spectator the possibility of new experience. 

Ballard also likes the newness, what Koolhaas would call the generic quality of airports: 

I welcome its transience, alienation and discontinuities, and its unashamed response to the pressures of speed, disposibility and the instant impulse. Here, under the flight paths of Heathrow, everything is designed for the next five minutes. Its centrepiece, and for me the most inspiring in England today, is Michael Manser's superb Heathrow Hilton, near Terminal Four. Its vast atrium resembles a planetarium in the way that it salutes the skies above its roof.

"Transcience" and "alienation" are its hallmarks. But it is exactly these things which make it the perfect site for the type of experience Ballard praises. He wants experience removed from context, pure and without compliations. Or, if there are complications, they are ones which the observer can remove himself from, pass on, become oneself transient. Like De Quincey in his opium trance recalling his ability to "draw from opium" an escape from sad or disturbing scenes. For the observer in the airport, the generic space is its own opium. 

Small Piece of a very large photo

40 Gigapixel Panaoramic Image Is The World’s Largest Indoor Photo

Strahov Monastery Panorama by Jeffrey Martin

Præteriens enim, et videns simulacra vestra, inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat: Ignoto Deo. Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis. (Acts 17: 23)

[For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.]

The web, large image, image of an inscription in a dead language, referring to an inscription in another dead language--somewhat ironic.

William Gibson on Twitter

deeply convinced of the merits of Twitter: “It’s the only social-media tool I ever use. The incredible simplicity of the thing strips away all the culture-building, the nation-building that comes with Facebook. Facebook feels like living in a mall; Twitter is like living in the street. You can bump into anyone. Nothing is guaranteed to be pleasant, [although] one can customize one’s experience.

“I wind up with something that is like an ever-changing 24-hour magic magazine, with a constant stream of novel, if pointless, information, which sounds like it could be lethal for a novelist, so I try to keep that in mind.”