The 1.3 Round Up
by Brian Michael Foote
I came home from dinner to see that Kim Jong Il died of “exhaustion” yesteday. It feels weird that he should pass away on the heels on the United States’ exit from Iraq earlier in the week. Were it the Bush years I’d say that our service members were probably now just making a layover in the US en route to the other side of the globe. But with Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin-Laden and Kim Jong Il all gone I suppose that leaves only Ahmadinejad haunting Bush’s quiet exile down in Texas. Despite how you feel about SOPA and the draconian NDAA, we’re still a long ways off from referring to sovereign nations as an ‘Axis of Evil’ on live television and, one hopes, the attendant hawkish military policy. Of course it’s not as if we’re really leaving Iraq so perhaps cutting the doves loose would be a little premature. While it was a poignant and thoughtful week in world news we were celebrating the culmination of a lot of hard work on the Commons. Commons 1.3 was released with a ton of new features. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the additions to the site be sure and read through Sarah’s post and take the new version out for a spin.
The blogs we’re exciting this week as well. Lee Hachadoorian over at ‘Free City’ shared his experience using the Kindle DX for PDFs. I’m glad we’re talking about Kindles and eReaders on the Commons. Earlier in the month Matt Gold and I were trying to figure where we fell on Kindles. I hate the idea of going digital when it comes to books. I like underlining and dogearing and reading other people’s notes on used copies of old books. Matt was no less romantic about it but much more pragmatic in terms of the big picture. Lee’s emphasis on PDFs bears some consideration though. I might be needlessly exposing a weak spot in my own research but I don’t always read articles with the same adore that I do books. Something like a Kindle might be the perfect instrument for articles where only parts of the research or data is relevant. Great…now I have to buy a Kindle and hope that none of the staff at Word sees me with it in the neighborhood.
Speaking of eBooks – Adam Wandt had a great post up asking the community to take a moment and think through how we can use eBooks to help CUNY students. It’s already sparked a wonderful conversation in the comments and I hope the Commons community can take a few minutes to check out Adam’s video and share their thoughts on how we can all help. I think this is something our community here is really ideally suited to address and play a part in.
Some other highlights from the week include Maura Smale’s presentation and slides for her ongoing research on undergraduate study habits and Florian Lengyel’s awesome Occupy/Math post.
Till next week!
Thanks for the shout out Brian! I also love books, and I don’t really think they’ll ever go away. For one thing, books are intellectual decoration. It’s great to do into someone’s home or office and see the books they have. It can give you a real sense of who someone is. What someone puts on their bookshelf is a form of identification–they are inviting you to observe what they are reading, what they value. By comparison, picking up their Kindle and flipping through it without asking–and maybe even asking, itself–would seem intrusive.
Similarly, e-readers introduce an asocial privacy to the actual act of reading in a public setting. For example, I like seeing what people are reading on the subway, and displaying what I’m reading as well. I’ve occasionally asked someone about a book they were reading, or had someone ask me, because you could see the title and wanted to know more. That unfortunately doesn’t happen with the Kindle. Eventually I hope that Kindles and other e-readers will have an outward facing screen that displays a “cover” for what you’re reading, so that reading stays a social activity.