John Miedema

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 5.
Every extension of self crosses a boundary, changing our relationship with others, and re-defining our identity. The extension of digital technology changes many things for readers. Readers are concerned with issues such as access to content and copyright, concepts under contention these days. You will find that many reader-hackers are digital media activists, people who have taken the time to learn the rules, and insightful enough to know when to bend and break them.
Here are some ways that reader-hackers are creatively contributing to new …

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 4.
The reader-hacker is first a reader, then a hacker. The reader still wants good books, often in print, though e-books meet certain needs too. The reader still wants a good story or a proper treatment of an idea. But this reader has discovered that technology increases the chances of finding good books, and extends the reading experience in new dimensions. The reader-hacker may simply be web-savvy, though some have advanced technical skills. It is a new breed of reader.
It is not hard to find reader-hackers …

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 3.
I use the term, ‘hacker’, for an activity that some do on the web. It has so many right connotations. It suggests the roughness and freshness of an amateur, as well at the persistence and control of a master. It suggests both creativity, and a willingness to bend or break rules to make technology serve a purpose, rather than being a passive recipient or slave of technology. It is not elitist; it only takes a willingness to think creatively and work hard.
Here are some definitions …

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 2.
Reading causes writing; it also causes hacking. Hacking refers to the use of digital technology for creative ends. I like the way the term has the connotation of amateur activity and the fresh thinking that goes with it, as well as the connotation of mastery.
1976. I was ten years old and would rather have been reading, but my friend forced me to watch Star Trek. After that, I couldn’t get enough of Star Trek, science fiction, and all things geeky.
A few years later, I …

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 1.
The web and print books are both technologies, each serving reading in its own way. The web and its associated reading devices lend themselves to scanning and reading short pieces. But there is a qualitative difference between the scanning we do on the web, and the long-form reading we do with print books. It is possible in principle to read long-form on the web, but it is an inferior technology for doing so. Print is also a technology, evolved over centuries. It is a superior …

Information Quake, Pt. 3
“Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.” I resonated strongly with this confession by Nicholas Carr in his already classic article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? I have always considered myself a slow reader. I learned later to see that in fact I have always been capable of reading quickly; I just didn’t count scanning as reading. On the web, I scan a lot. The more I …

Information Quake, Pt. 2
I come to these essays with a Generation X perspective. I identified as a reader in the days before digital computers went mainstream. In those days, being a geek meant being bookish. Teenage fun meant the acquisition of a new science fiction or fantasy novel to read that night. Being young and open-minded, I was equally ready for the information age. I was writing programs a decade before the web was introduced, and the early web was not exactly a garden of good reading material. These days, …

Information Quake, Pt. 1
In So Many Books, Garbriel Zaid tells us, “The reading of books is growing arithmetically; the writing of books is growing exponentially. If our passion for writing goes unchecked, in the near future there will be more people writing books than reading them.” (pg. 9). Furthermore, to read a book is to ignore 4000 others (pg. 22). It is often said that a person can only read 5000 books in a lifetime. Each book read eclipses a lifetime of reading.
It is a good expression of what …

Fair readers, although I am just blogging a first draft of I, Reader, I hope I have provided a relatively clear path of thought to follow along. With the conclusion of the last theme, “Birth of the Reader-Writer”, I believe I have reached a milestone. Next, I really start revving up the concepts, so I thought a recap was in order.
1. Readers and Robots. This first theme identified a perceived disparity between readers and robots, as if reading was a human activity, and technology some other colder thing. It was …

Reading Causes Writing, Pt. 5. Conclusion to this theme.
Literary theorists talk about the “death of the author”, a view that a work should be considered independent of the personal details of the author. In its place, we have the “birth of the reader”, the new source of meaning when interpreting a text. But things have changed again. Readers have been extended on-line. They publish their thoughts online as they are reading a book. Other readers are influenced by what is being written about a book as they are reading it, …

Reading Causes Writing, Pt. 4
Reading causes writing. When readers write, it is not necessarily for publication, though the social dimension of publishing is still desirable. Blogging is a quick and easy way of getting the social value of publication. But more and more, digital media is making it easier for amateur writers to get published. Here a couple noteworthy items:
Cloud Publishing at the Book Oven. Writers upload their manuscript and can edit it using their innovative tools, such as Bite Size Edits to edit a bit at a time. You …

Reading Causes Writing, Pt. 3
Readers of my blog know that I have used it to draft other projects. I blogged early material on slow reading, and blogged my way through two phases of development of my pet software project, OpenBook. At present, I am cutting an early draft of I, Reader using my blog. It fits with the subject, the inquiry into the connections between reading and web participation. As my posts pass the twenty count, I find myself going back to previous posts, updating them. I find myself adding …

He saw that her suitcase had shoved all his trays of slips over to one side of the pilot berth. They were for a book he was working on and the one of the four long card-catalog-type trays was by an edge where it could fall off. …
The reason Phaedrus used slips rather than full-sized sheets of paper is that a card-catalog tray full of slips provides a more random access. … Some of the slips were actually about this topic: random access and Quality. The two are closely related. …

When the paper came due she didn’t have it and was quite upset. She has tried and tried, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. …
“You’re not looking!” he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.
He told her angrily, “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the …

Reading Causes Writing, Pt. 2
Readers write to give some shape to what they have read. It may be an artistic expression, a short essay, a book review, or just a thought. Readers are not necessarily experienced writers. The web can help with that.
Writing is often considered a solitary act. My writing is much improved by engaging in social processes.
We are taught to write in high school. I eked my way through high school essays, usually ignoring the red-inked comments, looking only at the grade. I learned a new approach to …