As you are undoubtedly well aware, Steve Jobs unveiled the newest Apple money-suck toy product on Wednesday: the iPad. The most immediate response was to its tone-deaf name. I don’t actually find feminine hygiene products to be disgusting, but it’s hard not to laugh at jokes about iTampons or iKotex. That last joke really works best with medievalists; for everyone else, you need to spend so long explaining what a codex is, that the frog has been dissected and dead long before they know what to laugh at. But even aside from menstrual jokes, the best joke I’ve seen comes from a medievalist. Tom Elrod’s blog post, “Introducing the iCodex,” captures the breathless adoration of Steve Jobs’s fans and the rediscovery of reading technology. This image from the blog captures what’s smart and funny about it, as does this excerpt: With the iCodex, people can now store multiple items in…
Author: Sarah Werner
early modern mash-ups
In my last post wondering about important book history tools developments of the last decade, I got some interesting suggestions about what else to consider. For me, they came together as part of a way of remembering how advances or shifts in technology enable different ways of studying and creating knowledge and arts. In response, I’ve been thinking about mash-ups. Peter Friedman commented on my post that a reconsideration of authorship has been developing in part as a response to new technological tools. I’m not sure I see the correlation quite like that, at least in the field of literary studies, as opposed to his field of law. But I do agree that the availability of powerful computing tools to shape and reshape preexisting creations does reshape notions of authorship as individual ownership. EMI’s anger over Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (the 2004 mash-up of the the Beatles’s White Album and…
UPDATE: commenting problems FIXED!
UPDATE: w00t! I think I’ve now solved the commenting glitch by returning to the hideous pop-out comments as opposed to embedded comments. The important thing is not the beauty of the design but that you can share your wisdom with me! So please do! You can ignore what follows, except that if you find you are having problems, please email me at the address given below so that I can try to fix it! I think the blogging powers that be are angry with me for being a once-a-month poster! But whatever the reason, there’s some sort of bug affecting the ability for some of you to sign in and leave comments. Of course this happens when I’ve specifically asked for your feedback! I’m working on solving the problem–if any of you bloggers have had this happen to you, I’d be happen to hear your thoughts on how to fix…
the most influential book history tools of the decade
It’s that time of year again. Indeed, it’s that time of decade. That’s right, everywhere you look, top ten lists abound. I’m not sure why we need to list ten of things we find remarkable. But it’s made me start thinking: what would be on my top ten list of notable early modern book history events or tools of the decade? Right up there at the top would have to be digitization, from EEBO to Google Books to The Shakespeare Quartos Archive. The ability to access facsimiles of works without having to travel thousands of miles, potentially saving time and money and carbon emissions and wear and tear on the books, has fundamentally changed how we conduct and teach early modern books and book history. EEBO and Google Books have been mostly about access, but Shakespeare Quarto Archive is not only about access but about developing digital tools for studying…
e-updating
I don’t know where all the time has gone! One minute it was the start of the semester, and now it’s Thanksgiving. I’m particularly sad that I dropped the ball after my last post on e-books. I’d really meant to pick up the conversation but, unsurprisingly now that I look back at it, it was hard to pull my thoughts together. One of the things that has struck me the most is the weird way in which conversations about e-books tend to rocket between two polar positions: “I love books and e-books are an abomination!” and “I love my e-book and print is dead!” Both seem ridiculous to me in their totalizing insistence–surely the rise of electronic books aren’t going to fully eclipse books. Did radio wipe out television? Did cinema destroy theater? I don’t even think that the codex eliminated the value of tablets and scrolls. So to imagine…