An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand.
W.N.P. BarbellionHe went through rooms he named as he discovered them, and which he hardly had time to appreciate before he'd flung open a door at the far end and plunged through. . . . and in the Library of All the Same Book he actually stopped to examine a few of the volumes, all titled Various, that lined the shelves.
Chris Adrian..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.
Ray BradburyTags: reading book something-wicked-this-way-comes
The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world's books into one book, just as Kevin (Kelly) suggested. It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhattan Project of cultural digitization. What happens next is what's important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book. This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don't know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book.
The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible's authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as "the literal word of God." If we take a non-metaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window. The ethereal, digital replacement technology for the printing press happens to have come of age in a time when the unfortunate ideology I'm criticizing dominates technological culture. Authorship - the very idea of the individual point of view - is not a priority of the new ideology. The digital flattening of expression into a global mush is not presently enforced from the top down, as it is in the case of a North Korean printing press. Instead, the design of software builds the ideology into those actions that are the easiest to perform on the software designs that are becoming ubiquitous. It is true that by using these tools, individuals can author books or blogs or whatever, but people are encouraged by the economics of free content, crowd dynamics, and lord aggregators to serve up fragments instead of considered whole expressions or arguments. The efforts of authors are appreciated in a manner that erases the boundaries between them.
The one collective book will absolutely not be the same thing as the library of books by individuals it is bankrupting. Some believe it will be better; others, including me, believe it will be disastrously worse. As the famous line goes from Inherit the Wind: 'The Bible is a book... but it is not the only book' Any singular, exclusive book, even the collective one accumulating in the cloud, will become a cruel book if it is the only one available.
Tags: books writers bible book authors writer author mashups digitization
"Sarge, mr. Nurd here is threatening to turn me to jelly."
"really?" said Sarge. "what flavor?
Tags: humor book gates john-connolly science-fiction-fantasy
Not matter what your sacred or religious book is, it's not how well you know the book, it's how well you're in alignment with the author.
Steve MaraboliTags: motivational life inspirational success happiness religion book action religious author sacred texts
I’m so sorry. I don’t think the etiquette manuals cover this sort of situation.” He leaned in close, his lips all but grazing her neck, and inhaled. “Mmm. You smell good, too.”
She nearly choked. Took a step backwards, until her back met cold stone. “Th-thank you.”
“That’s better. May I kiss you?” His finger dipped into her shirt collar, stroking the tender nape of her neck.
“I d-don’t th-think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? We’re alone.” His hands were at her waist.
Her lungs felt tight and much too small. “Wh-what if somebody comes in?”
He considered for a moment. “Well, I suppose they’ll think I fancy grubby little boys.
Tags: book
Steal not this book for fear of shame
For on it is the owners name
And when you die the Lord will say
Where is the book you stole away
And when you say you do not know
The Lord will say go down below.
Tags: humor poem punishment book stealing
Le livre est un morceau de silence dans les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit se tait. Celui qui lit ne rompt pas le silence.
Pascal QuignardTags: reading writing silence book
Un livre est un peu de silence entre les mains du lecteur.
Celui qui écrit calme.
Celui qui le lit ne rompt pas le silence.
Tags: silence read book lire livre
« first previous
Page 16 of 46.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.