John Miedema

I recently asked, “Where do you read?” The American Antiquarian Society has a wonderful online curated exhibition, A Place of Reading. Index (click the ‘Enter’ line). Introduction.
In highlighting the locations where individuals performed the act of reading in America, through the use of images and objects from the AAS collections, we hope to tell a story. It is not a definitive story by any means, but a story of three centuries’ worth of individuals ‘caught’ in the act of reading in homes, taverns, libraries, military camps, parlors, kitchens, and …

Update, Dec 7: I am maintaining my I, Reader reading list at LibraryThing.
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This is my starter reading list for the next draft of I, Reader in 2010. Recommendations most welcome.
Battles, Matthew (2003). Library: An unquiet history. W.W. Norton.
Borges, Jorge Luis (2000). The library of Babel. David R. Godine.
Brand, Stewart (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University of Chicago Press.
Buzbee, Lewis (2008). The yellow-lighted bookshop: A memoir, a history. Graywolf.
D’Angelo, Ed (2006). Barbarians at the gates of the public library: …

The I, Reader series started as a collection of notes I kept over the previous year, as part of a book concept. The reason for undertaking the blog series was to provide a first draft of the ideas in the notes, a first rough cut. It was recognized that the first draft would not be anything close to a book, but it was hoped it would provide the outline of one. Writing the series did prove helpful in articulating the ideas, and sorting them into themes. The themes suggested a …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 5, Conclusion to this theme and the series
“We too are machines, just machines of a different type.” — Jean Luc Picard, ST: TNG, The Measure of a Man
The intent of the I, Reader series was to explore the connections between reading and web participation. The series used Asimov’s I, Robot as a starting point because his short stories raise many timeless issues that arise at the collision point of people and technology. People fear that technology will ultimately replace them. In practice, people use technology to extend …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 4
In Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books, Lynne Sharon Schwartz tells how her attention was caught by a piece in the New York Times by
a Chinese scholar whose “belief in Buddhism … has curbed his appetite for books.” Mr Cha says, “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and not let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking.” … Lying in the shadow of books, I brood on my reading habit. What is it all …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 3
The I, Reader series has wrestled with opposites. Robot vs person, print vs digital, self vs other, quantity vs quality, on vs off. Opposites are a hallmark of Western rational thought (as Mark commented). Other approaches may be helpful.
One, it can be valuable to simply reflect on opposites, koan-like, without making any effort to resolve them.
Two, we can reject the opposites, and look for synthesis.
In discussions of reading, one common dichotomy is that of print versus digital technology. The common view is that digital …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 2
Bibliophiles alert, if you have not discovered Keith Miller’s The Book of Flying, stop what you are doing and go get a copy. It is irresistible; I previously wrote a short tribute. Miller ran across it, and commented that his second book, The Book on Fire has been published. I am currently reading it. It is a mythology, fantasy and fetish of books, reading and the Library of Alexandria. Some quotes fit wonderfully with my current theme:
And slowly I arrived at a realization so startling I was …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 1
The adventures of Bilbo Baggins did not end with his famous good-bye to his friends and relatives at his eleventy-first birthday party. Nor did they end in the final chapter of Lord of the Rings. He sailed off with Frodo and Gandalf and the elves into the Grey Havens. Stories demand an ending, but if it has been a good story, are we ever content. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle finally killed off Sherlock Holmes, but at the insistence of his readers, resurrected him. Beyond endings, there is …

There is one theme left in this I, Reader series, and I find myself reflecting on the next stage. This was just a first cut, an attempt to give some form to a number of ideas that have been cooking for a while, living a half-life in text files. I am pleased with the progress so far and think maybe it will be worthwhile to write a second, serious draft next year, probably offline.
A key question I have been reflecting on is the target audience. It would be naive to …

Offworld, Pt. 5, Conclusion to this Theme
Every story deserves a good ending. It need not be a happy ending, but it should be a satisfying ending, providing a sense of completion. After his unexpected adventure in The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins returned to Hobbiton, but the time came to say goodbye to his many friends and relatives. “Alas, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.” Cheers abound. “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and …

Offworld, Pt. 4
PEOPLE
Batman is a creature of the night, just as much as Superman is citizen of the day. Batman vs. Superman. Who would win a fight? The comic book and movie makers have always promised to give us this battle. Superman is easily the physically superior one. How could Batman stand a chance? Batman must have a psychological edge of nearly equal power. There is a connection between Offworld and psychological depth.
Curmudgeons. Irritants. People who don’t absolutely love whatever new trend. Luddites protested the industrial revolution by throwing wrenches …

Offworld, Pt. 3
Want to make an elephant statue? Get a big rock and cut away all the parts that do not look like an elephant. It’s an old joke that makes a good point. A concept only becomes well-defined when contrasted with its opposite. It is the same idea explored earlier about self and other. In the information world, the discovery of other is facilitated by the extensions of technology. In contrast to other, the self is better defined. Definitions bind things. The self becomes finite, a robot. Turning off …

Offworld, Pt. 2
We are in the middle of an information race. The cultural impact, at least, is as significant as the arms race of the eighties.
I brought my car into an autobody shop. The owner was chatty and asked what I did for a living. When I told him I was in IT, he said he just loved computers. He showed me his new automated system for tracking parts. I asked if it saved him time. Yes, he said, he no longer has to spend all that time tracking parts …

Offworld, Pt. 1
In the universe of Asimov’s I, Robot, humans are fearful of robots, so laws are made that robots must go offworld to labour on distant planets. It often seems that technology can labour for us in some unseen place. It is an illusion.
I, Reader has explored how the reader is extended toward others with digital technology on the web. Readers write, and they hack. Yet a hack is just a rough cut, not something to be endlessly perfected, but something to be walked away from. Just as …

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 7.
Reader-hackers will be interested in reading material on hacking. The following books won’t teach you how to program, are not especially practical, but there is a good chance they will inspire original and critical thinking about technology.
Doctorow, Cory (2008). Little brother. Tor Teen. Download.
Feng-Hsiung Hsu (2002). Behind deep blue: Building the chess computer that defeated the world chess champion. Princeton University Press.
Graham, Paul (2004) Hackers & painters: Big ideas from the computer age. O’Reilly.
Hillis, Daniel (1998). The pattern on the stone. Basic Books.
Kurzweil, …