bike library
Yes, the progressive advocacy of the fullfilment of each person’s potential, so inherent in the mission of librarians, can be conveyed to any social activity. For example, donated bicycles can be reconditioned and “loaned” to those who will use them for transportation. A library fulfills hopes for adancement and understanding and cool bikes.
Our Bike Library in Iowa City is now a wild success. Just stop in and see what an authentic, heathy society can accomplish. As fast as our crew of six can outfit the bikes they are loaned out (from 5$ to 50$ for one year).
Something strange is going on here and sometimes the bike library feels like an enclave formulating the revolution.
grosse fuge
A discovery of the original
transcription for piano by Beethoven, with all his calligraphic accents, punctuations and concussions. Don’t try this with computer media.
“I doubt I’ll see any of them when I go to look at the “Grosse Fuge” manuscript next month. Why should they bother? They can already “access” it on the Internet. But without seeing the real thing, with actual light falling on its scuffs and blotches, will they ever feel the desperate energy of a dying Beethoven, imprisoned in the cavern of his own disability?”
Edmund Morris
This NYT item did miss the point. No such manuscript from today, if produced on non-paper media, will survive undiscovered for the next 200 years.
the other
Vectorizations ñ or the displacement of professionals from production economies into communication/infomatic economies ñ has immobilized second responders. Without abilities to merge with indigenous first responders the recovery response becomes obsessed with its own collapsing and disruptive communication layers and is immobilized into activities such as fund raising, diplomatics, fuel and supplies hoarding, laptop charging, etc. Meanwhile the local indigenous responders become more exhausted and intolerant of vectorized resources.
(why we are not doing well with hurricanes and other pandemics) (see also Neil Postman, Building a
Bridge to the 18th Century)
the truth is out there
Gary Taylor tells of the
prophetic consequence of relapse into cultural dependence on digital ephemera.
(download and print this terrific essay)