It's great to see so many online libraries and different organisations such as archive.org and google running digitization projects. I've spent so much money over the years on technical books and general reading books, which, the tech books in particular, are out of date quickly that I've often felt I have wasted some of my money on them. Since starting the new job (well over a year ago now, so not so new), and having to travel more, I've been using some of the online libraries - partcularly Questia, Safari (tech books) online and archive.org. The blogosphere and online libraries reminds me of the Neal Stephenson book "Snow Crash" - the citizen journalist, uploading of information & media for future references, online libraries. The future is happening!
I'm currently reading a couple of books - an online copy of Dan Gillmor's "We the Media" and a paperback by Patrick Neate called Where you're at - Notes from the frontline of a Hip Hop Planet. Gillmor reminded me of the google print project which was what started this post. I still enjoy reading paper copies of books - there's nothing like reading in bed on a rainy day, or a weekend, but I like the idea of online versions also. One of the main reason's for this, is that I can search for books I have bought and read them even whilst I'm away and not have to pay excess baggage to carry all the books with me. Before I head back to the UK, I'll drop off the books in Sydney and note down their names so I can either borrow them from local libraries or read online versions. Local libraries! I've had a resurgance in using these also! When I was in primary school I remember we were always in the library looking for books for class assignments. Once I started making money I began to buy the books instead of using the library. I've come full circle again, as I'm enjoying heading to the Auckland City Library. They have a great collection of arts and culture books. I have a friend who used to take his recording equipment (laptop/MD) into the library and dub some audio from the archived films and tapes for samples to use in his music. Perhaps I should check out the media collection at the Auckland library - I'm sure they'd have some great Maori language and local speeches which would be interesting to hear. Maybe even footage of the Rainbow Warrior.. Any way, time to go read some more ... :)
Robert Seidel: _grau is a personal reflection on memories coming up during a car accident, where past events emerge, fuse, erode and finally vanish ethereally. various real sources where distorted, filtered and fitted into a sculptural structure to create not a plain abstract, but a very private snapshot of a whole life within its last seconds...
The living paintings (Tableaux Vivants) of growing structures branch out over 10:01 minutes (a reference to the binary system by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, where he ascribes 1 to god and 0 to the devil) without ever reaching pure black or white respectively. Every element originates from real experiences and is adapted from my sketches, my own body fragments or scientific visualization methods. For example the first, still colored seconds are the prismatic halos of the collision fading into gray ("grau" in german)... The musical framework connects the memories born out of the dramatic moment to clusters. These are unleashed from the image flux partially - to ease the desired, free associations of the beholder...
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It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World
Exploring Online Reality
by Erik Davis
Originally appeared in The Village Voice, February 22, 1994
In our media-primed brains, the phrase "virtual reality" triggers off images of Robocop helmets, studded gloves, and 3D Nintendo. VR is seen as the scuba gear for the seas of simulation, a purely technological means of tricking the central nervous system into inhabiting a digitally concocted space.
from Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine / Volume 1, Number 3 / July 1, 1994 / Page 7
The Common Place MOO: Orality and Literacy in Virtual Reality
by Don Langham (langhd@rpi.edu)
In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates deliver what may be the earliest protest in Western history against the dehumanizing effects of "modern" technology. With the benefit of our literate perspective, it is easy to say that with his condemnation of writing, Plato establishes Socrates as the earliest Luddite. Yet, as modern critics acknowledge, writing is not without its dehumanizing qualities insofar as it encourages the isolation of the individual from community. Today, there is enthusiasm for computer-mediated communication's potential for ameliorating the divisions and isolation of print. For some rhetorical theorists, computer media promise to revitalize rhetoric by reintroducing the forgotten canons of classical rhetoric, memory and delivery. Among composition theorists, computer-mediated communication promises to move the writer out of the isolation of print into a hyptertextual network of readers and writers (Barker and Kemp, 1990). Whether or not CMC will have the democratizing, liberating effects its enthusiasts believe remains to be seen. But from the outset there is reason to believe that CMC may alter the nature of human interaction as fundamentally as writing and print have, perhaps producing a new way of "being" in the world.
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