Hey Santa

For Christmas, can I have a copy of this?
 

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Darn Right.

33. Old books are valuable.
But if the evolution of libraries grows to become an interactive meeting place for cultural events and the exchange of ideas, the preservation and exhibition of archival literary relics could be yet another facet to their importance (and, yes, intrigue). Indeed, old books are not only monetarily valuable, but they are [...]

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Things I’d like to see:

A discussion — perhaps a debate — between Chris Anderson and Robert Putnam on the future of American community, in light of existing and emerging media and communications technologies.
Just sayin’.

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The Nonfiction Section

This week, my Stat professor assigned a couple chapters from Freakonomics as a course reading. I saw that yesterday, thought, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to read that anyway,” and instead of just printing off the selections from the course website, I went to Borders and bought the book. And between 5 pm yesterday [...]

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The Cool and the Creepy

I just read the Fair Use comic book, Bound by Law? put out by the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain (research for my job; maybe it has some perks after all), and it’s really excellent. It’s a great primer on why and how the whole IP rights system is basically [...]

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Speaking of there being too much going on…

I’m never going to get this paper written.

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Someone get that man a functional metaphor

There are some books whose intense popularity I simply cannot fathom. A prime example of this: Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, which I am being made to choke down for my “Development and Future of the Internet” class.
Don’t get me wrong; I see why it might have been assigned. The topics it [...]

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Jeff would be so proud.

I have in front of me four books. One is to be expected: it’s Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas. The other three, well, less likely: they’re all tomes on the history of the library in American culture. Now, obviously, there is a link here — Lessig writes about the state of [...]

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