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. […]
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My wetware may have undergone some retrogressive modifications, or stabilized itself in what (by current standards of the speed of technological evolution) would be considered low gear. This leaves me less than ideally positioned for life amidst the suddenly emergent “Internet of Things” (IoT), in which I’m apparently considered a “digital immigrant” rather than a “digital native.” […] Tools cannot and should not ever be considered neutral. Whether tangible (a hammer and nails) or intangible (any given language), tools encode assumptions and biases, some unconscious and some not, built into them by those who invent and refine them. Those assumptions and biases are sometimes idiosyncratic but almost always cultural. […] Considered as a technological invention, what Kerouac’s typewriter-plus-scroll prefigures is . . . the word-processor document file. A space for writing as open and lengthy as you want it to be. Automatic word-wrap, automatic pagination, a new “page” within the document as soon as your text overruns the last one, nothing to get in the way of the pulsing of your words and the evolution of your idea. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Hurricane Sandy: Postlude (2)
A fair bet that those Staten Islanders who bore the brunt of Sandy voted for Romney (or would have if they could have made it to the polls). Which of course doesn’t stop them from calling out for help from FEMA, which Romney-Ryan would have loved to de-fund. Not that they deserve the devastation of their homes as payback for their hypocrisy. Or that divine retribution played some role in that. I’m just saying. […]