I’m reading Susan Dackerman’s Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe right now, one of the more beautiful illustrated books I’ve picked up in a while (with two hands, very heavy). It was produced in conjunction with an exhibit I saw at Harvard’s Sackler Library and it …
I’ve just returned from a fantastic conference in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Women’s Writing Instruments in the Eighteenth Century. We learned about the types of things that a woman would have at her desk when she sat down to write, including seals, wax, ink, quills, knives, …
Faux-linen is out. Modern industrial is in. Imaginary bookshelves are out, too. The big news at Apple this past week was the ouster of Scott Forstall, one of the chief designers for their mobile technologies. The even bigger news (for readers) is what this will mean for interface design. Forstall’s …
Over the past decade or so, a number of artists have been experimenting with the art of book demolition. As Garrett Stewart suggests in his definitive handbook of the movement, Bookwork, such practices of undoing books are akin to what he calls “demediation” — taking books out of their functional …
Introducing the “book pillow.” At first glance it looks like a large dictionary and can even be slid between other volumes on your shelf just like a regular tome. But when you’re feeling sleepy, just get out your reading material from your desk drawer, filing cabinet or shelf. The “book” …
I’m going to sign off for the summer — and get to my summer reading — with an image of my favorite new reading project: Tatsuya Narita’s Tenkipan, which uses an RSS feed to print out the weather on your morning toast. The latest in ubiquitous reading.
A recent, and very disturbing, ad-campaign pretended that homeless people were wifi hotspots. It was a gag, but they were paid to wear t-shirts that said “I’m [insert name], I’m a 4G hotspot.” What to do with vagrant, impoverished populations? I know, turn them into mobile transponders and pay them! …
My friend Ina Ferris has been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between books and remnants — the way books were integral during the nineteenth century to think about how cultural forms and practices persist past their time. The book was itself already seen as a vestige during the …
I’m sure many saw this classic New Yorker cover recently. A lot of people mentioned it to me. Look, they were saying, a funny cartoon about the death of the book. But what I like most about it is the way it highlights one of the ways through which books …
More on 3-D printing kits. I’m intrigued by the way “print” keeps getting more sophisticated, and more accessible, even with the so-called death of print. Either its like phosphorus (brightest before extinguishing) or people keep misunderstanding the long history of technologies of impression and their durability.