… it was the two extremes of human population range that fascinated him most of all. They very young and the very old – both… Read More »Arthur C. Clarke on Immortality and Decadence, Death and Life
Here’s Eisenstein again. There’s a lot at work: The combinatorial innovation that was the printing press created further opportunities for cross-pollination by breaking down old… Read More »Technology (23): Elizabeth Eisenstein on how the printing press created new networks and sparked further innovation
I’m working my way through Elizabeth Eisenstein’s excellent The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, an abridged version of her two-volume The Printing Press as… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (12): Elizabeth Eisenstein on How the Printing Press Changed Books
From the so-far excellent A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: Years ago, on the phone with Bill Buford, then fiction editor of The… Read More »“I read a line and I like it enough to read the next”: George Saunders on Stories as Linear Temporal Phenomena
The technology of writing isn’t simply the infrastructure of thought: it’s the enabling infrastructure of most of the complex activities we think of as government.… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (11): Writing Rules
Here’s the great Elizabeth Eisenstein on the impact of the printing press on a lost world of information underload, and an interesting lens for viewing… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (10): Elizabeth Eisenstein on the Printing Press and the End of the Information Famine
Seven year-old Onfim slays his enemies; Onfim is a wild beast. Onfim (hat tip: Alex Tabarrok and Owen) reminds us that reading and writing (and… Read More »Writing and Reading (and visual art) as Technology (9): Virtual Realities
Overlay For those who came in late, here’s everyone’s favourite online encyclopedia on AR: Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (8): Augmenting Reality
Rover, Wanderer …And the road becomes my brideI have stripped of all but prideSo in her I do confideAnd she keeps me satisfiedGives me all… Read More »The Hero’s Journey (Wherever I May Roam)
I haven’t been able to find a literacy campaign earlier than King Sejong the Great of Korea‘s 1443-1444 Hunminjeongeum (“The Correct/Proper Sounds for the Instruction… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (7): History’s First Mass Literacy Campaign?