I was having a discussion the other day about the digital books movement and saving a university money, and when I took the next logical step in the argument: “If we’re digitizing books to save space and money, why don’t we digitize librarians, too?” I was given a look in response intended to freeze fertile fields and euthanize rabid dogs.
Some ideas are born to be expressed — while other infantile
thoughts should be considered but never uttered or placed into action.
We
are confused by the meaning and intention of this “digital writing”
course where computers are given the odd requirement of inventing new
stories:
This course
introduces the Python programming language as a tool for writing
digital text. This course is specifically geared to serve as a
general-purpose introduction to programming in Python, but will be of
special interest to students interested in poetics, language, creative
writing and text analysis. Weekly programming exercises work toward a
midterm project and culminate in a final project. Python topics covered
include: functions; object-oriented programming; functional programming
(list comprehensions, recursion); getting data from the web; displaying
data on the web; parsing data formats (e.g., markup languages);
visualization and interactivity with Python. Poetics topics covered
include: character encodings (and other technical issues); cut-up and
re-mixed texts; the algorithmic nature of poetic form (proposing poetic
forms, generating text that conforms to poetic forms);
transcoding/transcription (from/to text); generative algorithms: n-gram
analysis, context-free grammars; performing digital writing.
Prerequisites: Introduction to Computational Media or equivalent
programming experience.
I am very pleased to announce that after only a mere eight years in development, the novella Kate is available for purchase on the Kindle. The process has been rather long and difficult but well worth it.
Are we in danger of losing our digital memories?
Too many of us suffer from a condition that is going to leave our grandchildren bereft. I call it personal digital disorder. Think of those thousands of digital photographs that lie hidden on our computers. Few store them, so those who come after us will not be able to look at them. It’s tragic.
As chief executive of the British Library, it’s my job to ensure that this does not extend to our national memory. At the exact moment Barack Obama was inaugurated, all traces of President Bush vanished from the White House website, replaced by images of and speeches by his successor. Attached to the website had been a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration – they may never know them now. When the website changed, the link was broken and the booklet became unavailable.
The 2000 Sydney Olympics was the first truly online games with more 150 websites, but these sites disappeared overnight at the end of the games and the only record is held by the National Library of Australia.
What is the value of a digital, virtual, collectible? Is something really rare and valuable if it can be digitally cloned with no difference whatsoever between the original and the clone?
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