Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder - David Weinberger
New York: Holt, 2007
The semester starts later this week. I guess I don't mind, but it's not something I'm looking forward to in the way that I used to look forward to the new quarter and my new classes. Maybe because I'm only taking one class, and because I'm doing it during my busy time at work. Anyway, to prepare, my professor asked us to read the book above, in order to get a perspective about the possibilities for information in the digital age.
Weinberger's got a little Malcolm Gladwell in him; he likes to use interesting anecdotes to illuminate a broader theory. In this case, the theme is that instead of having an order of a single place and category for everything, we can now assign things multiple places and categories, sorting and resorting them according to our own individual needs and wants at that moment. (Note to self: should tag blog posts and photos better)
This argument necessarily embraces a seeming paradox about the desireability of having a glut of information. For example, "if [businesses] make their information messier, it'll be easier to find" and (italics Weinberger's) "the solution to the overabundance of information is more information."
While talking about some of the most popular Web 2.0 sites out there (and the way other sites have incorporated similar strategies), Weinberger has also reminded me about how exciting it will be to be a social historian of this era, sorting through this messy and miscellaneous pile of information about ourselves and what we deem important. Flickr alone could keep a researcher going for years. (Of course, what a historian leaves out is almost as interesting as what she includes, and with all this information, there will be an awful lot to leave out.)
What will be truly interesting will be to see how Weinberger's analysis stands up over time, as the trends towards miscellany continue and shift, and maybe reverse. What will the online world look like in the future?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Lost in Translation (going for the easy pun)
The Translator, by Leila Aboulela
New York: Black Cat, 1999
This book is seriously beautiful. And soothing. Even when Sammar, the main protagonist, is agonizing over circumstances and sad, it is oddly calming. Which reflects the role that Islam plays in Sammar's life, sustaining her through a tragic loss, her reawakening and love (which forms the actual substance of the novel), and the way her growth is challenged and reaffirmed.
Sammar's faith was actually the most difficult aspect of the book for me. I just could not relate. And the fact that a happy outcome depends on bringing another character into the faith... well, it was hard for me. But also an excellent reminder that my secular humanist view of the world isn't the only one.
A couple passages that I found worth noting:
An observation that just hit me as funny and poignant. And on the second page no less, setting the tone for this reader for the rest of the novel.
On the strange paradox of time passing:
(Also, back in the day, I read this other love story titled The Translator. Also recommended. Ooh, and you can read my review of it for the Daily Cal. I used to have a lot more to say, I guess.)
New York: Black Cat, 1999
This book is seriously beautiful. And soothing. Even when Sammar, the main protagonist, is agonizing over circumstances and sad, it is oddly calming. Which reflects the role that Islam plays in Sammar's life, sustaining her through a tragic loss, her reawakening and love (which forms the actual substance of the novel), and the way her growth is challenged and reaffirmed.
Sammar's faith was actually the most difficult aspect of the book for me. I just could not relate. And the fact that a happy outcome depends on bringing another character into the faith... well, it was hard for me. But also an excellent reminder that my secular humanist view of the world isn't the only one.
A couple passages that I found worth noting:
Benches. White curved metal, each and every one bore a placard, In Loving Memory of this person or that. As if people must die so that others can sit in the Winter Garden.
An observation that just hit me as funny and poignant. And on the second page no less, setting the tone for this reader for the rest of the novel.
On the strange paradox of time passing:
The days were numbered. They dwindled and by their nature could not increase. But they were not normal days, they expanded as if by magic, they stretched out like trees, and the hours passed like the hours of a child, they did not flicker or melt deceptively away. She thought that it was not true what people said, that time passed quickly when you were happy and passed slowly when you were sad. For on her darkest days after Tarig died, grief had burned away time, devoured the hours effortlessly [...] Now each day stretched long and when Rae spoke to her a few words, when they only saw each other for a few minutes, these minutes expanded and these words multiplied and filled up time with what she wanted to take with her, what she did not want to leave behind.
(Also, back in the day, I read this other love story titled The Translator. Also recommended. Ooh, and you can read my review of it for the Daily Cal. I used to have a lot more to say, I guess.)
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Salman Rushdie writes better than I do (duh)
After I read Midnight's Children, I went around thinking in the cadences and magic of Rushdie's prose for weeks. I don't know if the same will happen after The Enchantress of Florence - it's magical foreignness may be too far afield to take my own style captive again.
But I digress. Since I'd much rather read Rushdie than myself, I figure I would share some of my favorite passages from Enchantress, which is pretty and lush and bizarre and just absolutely all over the place, which is what I love most about Rushdie. He is large. He contains multitudes.
Perhaps Rushdie's overarching theme, here stated by the Florentine who is an enchanter in his own right: "This may be the curse of the human race. Not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike."
" 'For a woman to please a man,' the emperor said, 'it is necessary that' " and the list goes on and on. The Florentine "Mughal of Love" replies that well-bred women of Italy are not at all like this. " 'But the courtesan, she fulfills all your ideals, except, possibly, for the business about the stained glass.' 'Never make love to a woman who is bad with stained glass,' the emperor said solemnly, giving no indication of humorous intent. 'Such a woman is an ignorant shrew.' "
"Women have always moaned about men [...] but it turns out that their deepest complaints are reserved for one another, because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous, and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex - loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love - and apparently they have all collectively decided those expectations were misplaced." [In this instance, the spate of jealous animosity was cured by having all the women go naked for a day, so they could see each other for all their faults.]
And in the New World, "the ordinary laws of space and time did not apply," moving forward, backward, and at different speeds. A statement that could be applied to Rushdie's created world, where historical figures and magic and intrigue and the past and less-past all come weaving into and around one another.
But I digress. Since I'd much rather read Rushdie than myself, I figure I would share some of my favorite passages from Enchantress, which is pretty and lush and bizarre and just absolutely all over the place, which is what I love most about Rushdie. He is large. He contains multitudes.
Perhaps Rushdie's overarching theme, here stated by the Florentine who is an enchanter in his own right: "This may be the curse of the human race. Not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike."
" 'For a woman to please a man,' the emperor said, 'it is necessary that' " and the list goes on and on. The Florentine "Mughal of Love" replies that well-bred women of Italy are not at all like this. " 'But the courtesan, she fulfills all your ideals, except, possibly, for the business about the stained glass.' 'Never make love to a woman who is bad with stained glass,' the emperor said solemnly, giving no indication of humorous intent. 'Such a woman is an ignorant shrew.' "
"Women have always moaned about men [...] but it turns out that their deepest complaints are reserved for one another, because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous, and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex - loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love - and apparently they have all collectively decided those expectations were misplaced." [In this instance, the spate of jealous animosity was cured by having all the women go naked for a day, so they could see each other for all their faults.]
And in the New World, "the ordinary laws of space and time did not apply," moving forward, backward, and at different speeds. A statement that could be applied to Rushdie's created world, where historical figures and magic and intrigue and the past and less-past all come weaving into and around one another.
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