I can bemoan the erosion of the analog library that I grew up loving as a quasi-sacral space, a physical site that embodied our cultural commitment to preserving our accumulated knowledge as imbedded in words on paper. And, at the same time, watching the children of my community surfing the net in our new postmodern branch library, I can also say, “Just look how beautiful it is. […]
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Follow me on Mastodon:
@adcoleman@hcommons.social
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Our newly renovated neighborhood library, a mashup of late 19th- and early 21st-century architectural styles,offers 40 computer stations and 10 loaner laptops with online access and printing, free wifi, DVDs and CDs. A perfect example of the postmodern library. It even has books. […] I’ve begun to consider the possibility that my brain does manage to wrap itself around these evolutionary shifts in digital technology without extreme difficulty. Which in turn suggests that perhaps this recurrent process helps to keep my brain active and young (or, more precisely, youth-like) by pushing me to learn new skills, to replace old habits with new or revised ones, and in one way or another to get some exercise for the mind. In short, I’ve begun to weigh the mental-health benefits of living la vida digital, with its steady reconfiguring of my neural pathways. […] This blog, its parent website (The Nearby Café), and the three other websites that form the consortium Photo Education Online have become a Go Daddy-free zone. With that said, the cause on behalf of which Go Daddy collaborated in the making of and endorsed SOPA — prevention of internet piracy — is one in which I believe. I’ll continue to sail the online seas and hang anyone pirating my IP from the virtual yardarm here. “Arrr” yourself, matey. You’ve been warned. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
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Dog Day Afternoons: Bits & Pieces (4)
Janet Reitman’s feature article, “Jahar’s World,” a profile of the surviving suspect in the Boston bombing of April 15, 2013, doesn’t earn its position as the cover story for this issue of Rolling Stone. Nothing in it justifies giving what’s basically a rehash of the material already in circulation pride of place in this issue of the magazine. Which makes designating this as the cover story, with the use of Jahar’s selfie on the cover, a cheap trick. That offends me. […]