An article in Salon.com today reviews a book called Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet, whose authors examine the rise and spread of information production, beginning at the dawn of Western civilization and continuing through the twenty-first century. But -- ask the authors -- so what? Is the so-called Information Age really so different from any that came before?
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/08/28/knowledge/
It sounds like a text that would find itself right at home among some of the texts we were assigned to read in LIS2000, such as Wright's Glut and Barabasi's Linked. I've been enjoying the texts that take a long view of history and knowledge, even when such books don't necessarily tell me what information or knowledge is.
Yes, this would be a more enlightening blog post if I had actually read the new book of which the article speaks, but I found the review itself interesting in its summarization of various cultures' prioritizing of speech over writing or vice-versa -- and related questions about how and where internet discourse fits in to such equations.
I'll try to keep blogging every now and then as the new semester begins!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Anyone still reading this?
Image via Wikipedia Yeah, OK, so I've let the blog slide since class ended. But why not keep it running? For the last several days I've been on a beach vacation with my family, and our recent nostalgic YouTubing has inspired me to post this video that rocked my world and blew my mind when I was seven years old. Then when I met my future husband thirteen years later, we totally bonded over how much this short film rocked our worlds and blew our minds when we were seven years old.No, it doesn't have particularly much to do with library school or related issues, but who among us wouldn't benefit from a broader perspective? (Way broader...) I therefore invite you to enjoy Al Jarnow's "Cosmic Clock" from 3-2-1 Contact (still one of my favorite TV shows ever). Hooray for Children's Television Workshop!
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Thursday, July 31, 2008
My final assignment!
On this last humid day of July, I'm happy to bring my LIS2600 work to a close and amalgamate the results into a portfolio. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen:
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/portfolio_livingston.html
And just in case anyone would like to see my index page (in a pretentious font that seems to say, "Braised Portobello Caps, 27-"):
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/
That's all for now; good night and good luck!
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/portfolio_livingston.html
And just in case anyone would like to see my index page (in a pretentious font that seems to say, "Braised Portobello Caps, 27-"):
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/
That's all for now; good night and good luck!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
No no wait, NOW I've got it!!!
Image via WikipediaOK, my previous post was a bit premature; I hadn't yet ironed out the kinks of CSS formatting or even, um, actually linked my style sheet to its document. Heh. But NOW I've got it figured out, and I invite the reader to visit my updated assignment sites, if said reader cares to do so (and unless said reader is a teaching assistant for this course, that's actually highly unlikely).The index:
www.pitt.edu/~ell34
The Thoreau document with css embedded:
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/thoreau_fragment_2.html
and the css sheet, such as it is (which still isn't perfect... a few little quirks... oh well, I'm still learning here):
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/livingstoncss.css
Now time to get back to work on my other class projects!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Another HTML document is born
Image via WikipediaContinuing my tradition of putting off everything until the last minute, I've only just now managed to post my hypertext-linked version of the Thoreau document to my Pitt web page. I'm still fiddling around with CSS files and whatnot, and given that it's a Saturday night past 2 a.m., and given that I drank two glasses of wine earlier, and given that (I confess) I'm watching The Muppet Movie even as I write this, I'm a bit distracted and not entirely sure I've completed even this portion of the assignment satisfactorily. But what the hey, here's the link:http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/index.html
and more directly:
http://www.pitt.edu/~ell34/thoreau_fragment_3.html
I'm a bit concerned that there's something I've failed to do... I'll have to look into it tomorrow, when I'm not fiendishly writing my paper for LIS2000. Phew, lots to do before the semester ends. Yeah, I should probably go to bed now.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A bear can ride a bicycle.
A bear can ride a bicycle.
I once heard Daniel Dennett begin a philosophy lecture that way. It was a striking opening, but I would bastardize his subsequent point if I tried to summarize it. Now I'm only beginning my blog post this way in a transparent bid for Zemanta to find me a cool image of a bear on a bicycle with which to decorate this utterly fluffy and meaningless post. I mean, it's COOL that a bear can ride a bicycle... as long as people aren't, y'know, whipping bears into submission, or mistreating them, or forcing them to perform against their wills. But come to think of it, does a bear ever WANT to ride a bike? Who can say? Maybe animals should just be left alone.
The whole topic reminds me of a John Irving story embedded within his novel The World According to Garp, in which a bear rides a bicycle (if I recall correctly). That was an excellent novel. But, I'm sorry to say, after all of this writing about bears and bicycles, Zemanta has merely suggested some photos of bicycles (sans bears), and some images of teddy bears, but not a single photo of a bear on a bicycle. Aw well, it was an awfully specific request.
Ergo, I'm going to take matters into my own hands and Google image-search "bear" and "bicycle."
There ya go. You know, the more I think about it, the more *wrong* it somehow seems that anyone ever even tried to get a bear to ride a bicycle. I hope that the above-depicted bear had a good life, despite everything.
I once heard Daniel Dennett begin a philosophy lecture that way. It was a striking opening, but I would bastardize his subsequent point if I tried to summarize it. Now I'm only beginning my blog post this way in a transparent bid for Zemanta to find me a cool image of a bear on a bicycle with which to decorate this utterly fluffy and meaningless post. I mean, it's COOL that a bear can ride a bicycle... as long as people aren't, y'know, whipping bears into submission, or mistreating them, or forcing them to perform against their wills. But come to think of it, does a bear ever WANT to ride a bike? Who can say? Maybe animals should just be left alone.
The whole topic reminds me of a John Irving story embedded within his novel The World According to Garp, in which a bear rides a bicycle (if I recall correctly). That was an excellent novel. But, I'm sorry to say, after all of this writing about bears and bicycles, Zemanta has merely suggested some photos of bicycles (sans bears), and some images of teddy bears, but not a single photo of a bear on a bicycle. Aw well, it was an awfully specific request.
Ergo, I'm going to take matters into my own hands and Google image-search "bear" and "bicycle."
There ya go. You know, the more I think about it, the more *wrong* it somehow seems that anyone ever even tried to get a bear to ride a bicycle. I hope that the above-depicted bear had a good life, despite everything.
The dance between copyright enforcers and violators continues
Regarding my previous blog entry: the very morning after I posted the links to the YouTube versions of The Grey Album, the aforementioned blog-reader informed me that the music on YouTube had already been "removed due to terms of use violation." And no sooner had I confirmed this news than I discovered that someone else had posted yet another version of The Grey Album on YouTube a mere two hours earlier. Is this a daily pas-de-deux, with enforcers perennially erasing and renegades perennially reposting? I admit that I took the chance to download the music from YouTube while I could, but I won't post the files here, lest my MLIS2600 blog be forcibly removed from the Internet. (Hello, creeping paranoia... did I just admit to something that could get my computer seized?... Please don't seize my computer.) But anyway.
This week I'm just finishing up the semester's courses: doing lots and lots of reading about copyright law (it's a recurrent topic these days!), thinking about how to compose the final LIS2000 paper, and procrastinating completing Part 2 of the HTML assignment. I'll complete it soon enough, and post a link here. Meanwhile, maybe it's something about the summer heat, but all I feel like doing right now is zoning out and watching a movie or something.
But first, just to get Zemanta to suggest a cool picture, I'm going to add text about Klein bottles. That's right, Klein bottles, a bottle with a non-orientable surface, the Moebius Strip of bottle-making. Yeah, Klein bottles! Klein bottles! If I type that phrase enough, will Zemanta find me a picture of a Klein bottle? Aha! It worked!
Image via Wikipedia
This week I'm just finishing up the semester's courses: doing lots and lots of reading about copyright law (it's a recurrent topic these days!), thinking about how to compose the final LIS2000 paper, and procrastinating completing Part 2 of the HTML assignment. I'll complete it soon enough, and post a link here. Meanwhile, maybe it's something about the summer heat, but all I feel like doing right now is zoning out and watching a movie or something.
But first, just to get Zemanta to suggest a cool picture, I'm going to add text about Klein bottles. That's right, Klein bottles, a bottle with a non-orientable surface, the Moebius Strip of bottle-making. Yeah, Klein bottles! Klein bottles! If I type that phrase enough, will Zemanta find me a picture of a Klein bottle? Aha! It worked!
Image via Wikipedia
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