Link Dumpage for 2010-05-25
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing. The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé ... The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing."
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"History relates that it was on November 10, 1871, that Henry Morton Stanley walked up to Dr Livingstone in the market place of Ujiji, and uttered the immortal line, "Dr Livingstone, I presume". But was that what he actually said? Nowadays there seems to be some doubt. ... Since Stanley apparently tore up the pages of his diary for the momentous day, there's no way of knowing the truth. The greeting seems to have shrunk in the telling, as it rapidly became a famous catchphrase. Stanley himself was using the snappier version by the time he got back to London, as this speech to a rapturous audience at St James's Hall records."
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"Just because you don’t enjoy reading a good book, doesn’t mean there aren’t many other uses for all of those books piled up in the attic." Some incredible imagery here, both from single books, and collections of books.
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"I finally settled on building the device I describe here: a puzzle box that won’t open until it is taken to a certain location ... Mounted into the lid, perhaps incongruously, are an illuminated button, a small display, and a mysterious module that sharp-eyed readers might recognize as a GPS."
