Other
-
Envisioning the PC Workstation, in 1968
“[Doug Engelbart], for those who haven’t heard of him, conceived of and then went on to invent much of what we value today in computing from the standpoint of the user. Networks, graphical computing, hypertext, the mouse — Doug’s the…
-
This Suit Gets It
“We think that lasting relationships matter, and we share some basic beliefs: Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe to tell the truth. We…
-
“Empire Of Illusion,” A Book I Haven’t Read Yet
One of the great things about the bookstore business is you get to be the first to see what’s new. And when you work for a small, used bookstore, the buyers are pretty picky about what they want to carry,…
-
Small Is Not Cute, It’s Huge
“I was traveling and barely understood how I’d ended up there on a Ferris wheel at night, dangling above a town I didn’t know, thousands of miles from anyone I knew well, looking out at the dark cliffs, ocean, and…
-
Morning Coffee
The most amazing website on the Internet. (might want to turn the sound down on your computer, NSFW) Perhaps the real question here is why was Sarah Palin signing a baby? Judge Sotomayer v. 1977 Kansas City Royals. Watch people…
-
Morning Coffee
Social networking sites as art installation. Light-test.com collects photographer’s, uh, light tests. The results are playful and fascinating. A Journey Round My Skull takes a rare trip outside its selfimposed literary borders into the world of music paraphanalia. This one…
-
THE EYEBALL: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
When you grow up being called a faggot by farm boys because you like to read books, Woody Allen can appear as something of a savior. That’s my story, anyway. Allen’s early films with their broad appeal mean that even…
-
A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #11: The Auxiliary Father
My high school soccer coach was a Guatemalan immigrant who had made his way to the States when he was in his twenties. At first he’d earned his living as an Arthur Murray dance instructor, but that phase of his…
-
Morning Coffee
The Big Picture on the 2009 Venice Biennale. Andreas Gursky‘s photographs of enormous scale. More on Hemingway being a failed KGB spy. (bonus music link.) Brooklynites are an ingenious sort. Case in point: a swimming pool made out of dumpsters.…
-
The Past and Possible Future of Wikipedia
The London Review of Books recently published one of the best single articles I’ve ever read about the history and possible future of Wikipedia, in a review of Andrew Lih’s The Wikipedia Revolution. The LRB article, by David Runciman, starts…