the last book & the end of time whatever
The March/April Utne Reader has an enclave of items on “The Last Book”, “Cyber-gizmo gurus say that in the next 20 years, they’ll put the world’s libraries in your pocket, but what will happen to culture when they do?” (get the paper copy). I am just losing my patience with the forever soon to be take-off of the e-Book. The reality is that the hands prompt the mind when it comes to reading and there is a million years of the evolution of conciousness to prove it.
Check out this perplexed quote:
“Using the page-turning button, I clicked nicely through the story. But it wasn’t capturing my attention. It may have been the writing, but maybe my brain’s receptors were failing to find whatever part of the book makes them books. I think it was all that glass. Reading the story was like watching a fish in an aquarium tank. I wanted to swim with it.”
zipperjamas
The New York Times has an an item on increasing academic interest in material culture. Material culture includes physical books. Henry Petroski’s work on bookshelves is mentioned. I found this a catalog of historical incident and didn’t get much on first reading. My nomination for the book on the material culture implication of the book is Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book, Print and Knowledge in the Making, University of Chicago Press, 1998, isbn 0 226 40121 9. .
preservation for kids
Everybody knows that books tell stories. What everybody does not know is that there is a story to books. It is an amazing and almost secret story and here is how it begins.
plain talking
This is really pretty cool since you can convey speech silently using handwritting with a ball point pen on a tablet and radio transmit to a swivel display screen that projects the image of the handwriting where it can be cut and pasted as an image file to an email. Then you close the book format pad with a not clam shell configuration laptop disguised due to the smart portfolio styling with flexible spine.
The CONCEPT LAPTOP ThinkPad TransNote by I.B.M. (review from New York Times)