December 2011
18 posts
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“Print media needs to be better defended,” he insists. “It’s a...”
– Melville House founder Dennis Johnson on their hybrid books platform, which allows readers who purchase the “superior technology” of the press’ print media to be treated to digital “illuminations” (which range from supplemental letters and scholarship to recipes) via QR...
Let there be light!
shitmystudentswrite:
The Enlightenment started when Einstein invented the light bulb. Until then people could not work long enough to figure things out because it got dark too early.
A perfect example of why this must be one of the least successful iterations of the series.
“Books are not just pieces of property to be bought and sold through contract;...”
– Peter Brantley on the National Foundation for the Blind’s frustration with the Author’s Guild lawsuit against Google Books. The NFB was excited about the possibilities unleashed by Google’s scanning (and OCR) project, describing it as “the next step in the democratization of...
“Despite efforts to salvage it – including the hotly contested new “Stop Online...”
– [Libertarian think tank] Mercatus Center Fellow and Forbes columnist Adam Thierer makes this precious claim about the way copyright has worked in America’s favor throughout its history. Like most libertarians, he thinks property and markets explain everything, so if we have a “vibran...
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Roundup post
danah boyd reprises her infamous manifesto on open access publishing, saying “Save Scholarly Ideas, Not the Publishing Industry.” I feel a little more sympathetic to junior scholars who send work to journals of the evil corporate variety, but she usually makes waves so its worth noting.
Andy Baio’s post on young people’s perceptions of copyright set the Twitter abuzz last...
“Every time a new media technology has been made available, it has always been...”
– Conclusion of a Swiss government report on downloading of media content for personal use. The report, which concluded that this kind of downloading does little to harm copyright holders, has led Switzerland to refrain from criminalizing the practice. That’s the kind of neutrality I can get...
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“Contrary to many futuristic projections—even from bibliophiles who, as a group,...”
– - William Pannapacker in The Chronicle, talking about the continued relevance of books as material objects and bookstores and libraries as sites of serendipitous discovery. The need to preserve or approximate serendipitous discovery is an ongoing theme I hear often in relation to the potential...
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“Problems are solvable, and we are capable of confronting them. You are capable...”
– Aaron Bady (or @zungazunga on Twitter) from his moving description of the Oakland Commune.
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“The ruling class in the United States is less and less one that makes things,...”
– McKenzie Wark, from his aptly titled piece on the present conjuncture “Things are fucked up and bullshit” in Theory and Event. He doesn’t cite himself (as Badiou might) but the discussion of vectoral capitalism is an old concept of his, which he’s refined through several...
OCCUPY STUDENT DEBT: New Video from... →
occupystudentdebt:
December 5, 2011
For immediate release
At a time when young people should be planning their lives, many now are faced with inescapable lifelong student debt which sucks away most of their disposable income. Many in our generation wake up every morning and realize that we will never be…
