archive

There are no bad books

From the inaugural issue of New Knowledge Environments, Ethan Hawkley (Northeastern): Where’s Walden? Searching, Googling, Reading, and Living in the Digital Age; and Patrick Juola (Duquesne): Guessing at the Content of a Million Books. A look at how Google counted the world’s 129 million books (and more). From Meanland, McKenzie Wark writes on publishing A Hacker Manifesto and the beginnings of a copygift economy; Sherman Young explores how the book as a physical object enables control of the industry; Emmett Stinson gives us the lowdown on book piracy and associated myths; and Margaret Simons examines all that is exciting and frightening about reading in a digital era. The unrecorded history of online publishing: An interview with Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book. A review of The Late Age of Print by Ted Striphas. From Fine Books, a look at the greatest book collector you never heard of; and an article on book collecting for posterity. From New York, a special section on Indie Bookstores: Against all odds, a small army of neighborhood bookshops has arrived. A review of The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World by Yun Lee Too. Creative new uses for books: Rob Walker on the bright future of hardbacks — as decorative objects and props. There are no bad books, just special ones. With the continuing decline of the bookstore, where do you pick up your likeminded nerds/intellectuals/David Foster Wallace dweebs?