MetaFilter posts tagged with text and books

stop crying kindle fanboy

taz — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 07:16:24 -0800

Some are calling it the "Kindle Killer". (Demo launch video at engadget.) Plastic Logic's new e-reader, expected to be out in the first half of 2009, does promise to offer a lot that Kindle and most other other popular e-readers don't, like a larger display, big enough to provide a newspaper or magazine layout; touch-based markup and annotation; the ability to read standard documents and other file types without conversion; (promised) Wi-Fi connectivity (including the ability to transfer documents between readers); and last but not least, a screen display that you can hit with a shoe, and isn't that something we've all been waiting for during these tense times? But in the Plastic Logic vs Amazon Kindle smackdown, "Plastic Logic says they don't plan to compete with Kindle directly, instead, it's targeting business mobile professionals with 'a lot of documents already,' not those who will get all their content from the Amazon store." Heh. The question on everyone's lips, of course, is what about price? Wired reports that while pricing has not been announced, "officials said the reader would be "priced competitively" with devices such as the Kindle, which currently costs $359". Other questions? The NYT touches on issues of privacy, mentioning that, "as an electronic device, newspapers can determine who is reading their paper, and even which articles are being read. Advertisers would be able to understand their audience and direct advertising to its likeliest customers" and wonders "how much people will pay for a device and the newspaper subscription for it". (emphasis mine)

"Schools should continue to require library research so they can see how old folks used to Google stuff."

Kattullus — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:12:42 -0800

The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts. In place of the long-term view of technological transformations, which underlies the common notion that we have just entered a new era, the information age, I want to argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable. Let's begin with the Internet and work backward in time.

The Library in the New Age by Robert Darnton, historian and Director of the Harvard Library. A wide-ranging overview of the status of libraries in the modern world, touching on such subjects as: journalist poker games, French people liking the smell of books, bibliography at Google, news dissemination in the 18th Century, book piracy and the different texts of Shakespeare. Some responses: Defending the Library of Google, The Future in the Past and Librarians Need a Better Apologetic.

The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox?

kenko — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:46:28 -0800

The works of Sir Thomas Browne, with a selection of other texts not by him.

The Interesting Yezidis

plep — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 05:44:25 -0800

Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidiz , by Isya Joseph, 1919. 'This is one of the only public domain sources of information on the religious beliefs of the Yezidi, a small group originally from the northern region of Iraq. Although they speak Kurdish, they are a distinct population from the Kurds. The Yezidi are notable because they have been described as devil-worshippers, which has naturally led to constant persecution by the dominant Islamic culture of the region ... They have many unique beliefs, such as that the first Yezidi were created by Adam by parthenogenesis separately from Eve ... ' New on sacred-texts.com.