personal leave

I moved from Cambridge to Baltimore this week. And my dad -- my biggest supporter, and perhaps the only reader of this blog for its first 6 months of existence -- has been hospitalized. I won't be blogging until he gets better.

Images: Little Gidding Harmonies

I just realized that Harvard has digitized some pages from their copy of a Little Gidding Concordance, a cut-up "harmony" of the Bible produced by Nicholas Ferrar's community in 1630. (Remember them?) Neat.

New Writing Universe

The writer's guide to making a digital living, accompanied by New Writing Universe, an interactive flash people for exploring the new kinds of writing encouraged by and made for digital media.

dadameter

Dadameter, a "global index of the decary of the aura of language." Via anathematas.

Arianna Huffington is confused.

This is making the rounds: Arianna Huffington doesn't have a clue about media or book history, and Got Medieval's got something to say about it.

Alexander Brome said it best 350 years ago. This is..

papered code: inefficiency par excellence

MIT Libraries is demanding a paper copy of my entirely web-based thesis.

So they've got it. 461 pages of the most inefficient code you ever did see.

Be back in a few days -- one more paper, and I'm done.

Lessons Learned Recently, in Bullets: MiT6 + Dan Dennett

Media in Transition 6 is near its end. Here's what I learned:

• Some librarians still think the kids these days aren't learning their History; but most people know this is ridiculous.
• Digital Humanities definitely needs more documentation. And interface design.
  
• Andrew Piper's forthcoming book Dreaming in Books will, in fact, be as awesome as it sounds.
• In attempting to resurrect Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, the Gutenberg Parenthesis idea has created a zombie. Ugly, but easy to kill.

And here's what I learned from a recent talk by Daniel Dennett on cultural evolution and the brain as software:

• It isn't necessary to define culture to talk about culture as if you have.
• Despite its obvious relevance, media studies is all but absent from the conversation on memetic cultural evolution.
  
• Thinkos are like typos, but for ideas. As in: The Gutenberg Parenthesis is a thinko.
• Dennett has a charming way of deflecting all criticism. Watch and learn.
  
• Steven Pinker iz smartt. Droooool.