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DFW copy of Borges: A Life by Edwin Will

First page handwritten draft of Infinite

DFW copy of Players by Don DeLillo

✖ Via David Foster Wallace Archive at The Harry Ransom Center

“The Wallace materials are being processed and organized and will be available to researchers and the public in fall 2010. Some items from the archive can be viewed at www.hrc.utexas.edu/dfw, and a selection of materials will be on display in the Ransom Center’s lobby through April 9. High-resolution press images from the collection are available.” (more)

There’s a good overview of the archive and its story in the last edition of The New Yorker (subscription may be needed for full access).

David Foster Wallace is the author of Infinite Jest (1996). He died in 2008. Learn more about him on Wikipedia. Kottke has some suggestions for those who are planning to read The Infinite Jest.

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An empirical test of ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger shows the great German philosopher to be correct: Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves. The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition. “The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.” Chemero’s experiment, published March 9 in Public Library of Science, was designed to test one of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts: that people don’t notice familiar, functional tools, but instead “see through” them to a task at hand, for precisely the same reasons that one doesn’t think of one’s fingers while tying shoelaces. The tools are us.

✖ Via Wired Science: “Your Computer Really Is a Part of You” by Brandon Keim, March 9, 2010

The study “A Demonstration of the Transition from Ready-to-Hand to Unready-to-Hand” by Dobromir G. Dotov, Lin Nie, Anthony Chemero is available online (PDF).

The “fondamental concept” to which Chemero is referring is the concept of “readiness-to-hand”. Heidegger explains this concept in section 15 of his book Being and Time : “The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment” (see Google Books). To understand this concept, one can get help from Wikipedia, from an online Glossary of Terms in Being and Time (edited by Roderick Munday, last updated in March 2009) and from Dean Heckles’ blog (Heckle “is a social–cognitive scientist and a PhD student at Stanford” and he specifically chose to name his blog… “Ready-to-hand” : great introduction to the concept if you’re into technology or communication or media studies).

For a good overview of what’s at stakes today when it comes to our relationship to technology, one should read the “General Introduction” of the first book of the Technics and Time trilogy by Bernard Stiegler. The book has been translated from French by Richard Beardsworth and George Collins. The “General Introduction” which run from page 1 to 18 is available via Google Books.

Previously on Skandalon: cognition and media ecology.

↳Share link notes reblogged from Christopher Butler technology communication medium media philosophy cognition Heidegger theory Stiegler author book ecology

SO: ARE PRINTED BOOKS DEAD? Not quite. The rules for iPad content are still ambiguous. None of us has had enough time with the device to confidently define them. I have, however, spent six years thinking about materials, form, physicality and content and — to the best of my humble abilities — producing printed books. So, for now, here’s my take on the print side of things moving forward. Ask yourself, “Is your work disposable?” For me, in asking myself this, I only see one obvious ruleset:
- Formless Content goes digital.
- Definite Content gets divided between the iPad and printing.
Of the books we do print — the books we make — they need rigor. They need to be books where the object is embraced as a canvas by designer, publisher and writer. This is the only way these books as physical objects will carry any meaning moving forward.

✖ Via Craig Mod: “Books in the Age of the iPad” March 2010

Craig Mod is a “developer; writer; book designer; publisher; professional world-wide digital hobo”. Here’s what he has to say about books:

“I’ve always loved books. I’ve always loved computers. We are currently experiencing a very unique convergence point for things digital and analog. Because of this, I think that right now is a very exciting time to be involved with storytelling. The world is smaller than ever and the stories hidden in data and hitherto inaccessible cultures are just a few keystrokes or a plane ride away. I’m interested in engaging these stories, developing sustainable businesses that evoke thoughtful communities and finding ways to bridge cultures.” (more)

Check out the books he designed.

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art technology communication economy animal human book author biology life illustration illustrator

✖ Via Beastness by David Jaclin (self-published, 2009). Cover illustration by Antoine Corbineau

Read an excerpt from the book (in French). Buy the book online. Check out David’s blog 10 Secondes Tigre.

“Beastness” is the contraction of “fitness” (in a biological sense) and “beast”. It’s the name David Jaclin gave to the evolution of the relationship’s economy (“business”) bonding humans and animals since the dawn of time to the present day.

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technology book author terror terrorism bomb car

✖ Via Buda’s Wagon. A Brief History of the Car Bomb by Mike Davis, New York: Verso, 2007 [Amazon]

From the publisher’s website:

“On a September day in 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda exploded a horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite and iron scrap near New York’s Wall Street, killing 40 people. Since Buda’s prototype the car bomb has evolved into a “poor man’s air force,” a generic weapon of mass destruction that now craters cities from Bombay to Oklahoma City.

In this gripping and disturbing history, Mike Davis traces its worldwide use and development, in the process exposing the role of state intelligence agencies—particularly those of the United States, Israel, India, and Pakistan—in globalizing urban terrorist techniques. Davis argues that it is the incessant impact of car bombs, rather than the more apocalyptic threats of nuclear or bio-terrorism, that is changing cities and urban lifestyles, as privileged centers of power increasingly surround themselves with “rings of steel” against a weapon that nevertheless seems impossible to defeat.” (more)

This book won the Lannan Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Read a short review of the book.

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English edition (2009)

Gleen Beck on FOX News

Original French edition (2007)

✖ Via The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee, translated from French, published by Semiotext(e), [2007]2009

Full English translation available online free of charge. Amazon link. Learn more about it on Wikipedia. Official website of The Invisible Committee

As of today, this book is no17 in the Amazon.com Books Bestsellers list. Explanation ? Glenn Beck hates it (and asked its viewer to read it) :

“It’s undoubtedly the last thing he wanted to happen, but when Fox News’s vocal right-wing presenter Glenn Beck described French anarchist revolution manual The Coming Insurrection as “quite possibly the most evil thing I’ve ever read” he sent it soaring to the top of the bestseller charts.” (Guardian.co.uk)

The Guardian got it wrong on one point : Glenn Beck did ask its viewer to read the book. Here’s what happenned to the book :

“At the time he mentioned the book (5:13pmET on February 10), the edition of the book Beck held up was ranked #432 at Amazon and #20,609 at BN. 24 hours later, the book had moved up to #7 at Amazon and #14 at BN.” (more)

It happens last week, on Feb. 10 (watch it on YouTube @ 3’44”), but Glenn started to talk about this book back in July 2009.

Beck actually use the book as an example illustrating the 20th “global debt time bombs that could go off and change the world” listed by Paul B. Farrell. Here’s the full quotation from the show aired on Feb. 10, 2010:

“20. The Coming Populous Rebellion Bombs: This one I love because those in the media are gonna tell you it’s the Tea Parties. Well let me show you what it really is. It’s Van Jones: […] A 9/11 Truther, radical communist who set up organizations to defend cop killers. He was in the White House and now is going out on a speaking tour with a senator from New York. […] Let me show you what it looks like — the finished product — I told you last summer, to read this book: “The Coming Insurrection” by Invisible Committee. This is quite possibly the most evil thing I’ve ever read. It’s about to play out in the streets of Greece. It’s been played out in France. What’s the story? […] People who are actual communists have been masquerading as Democratic socialists: We’re not Marxists, we’re just like you. They fell into bed with their politicians […] and they were backed, and according to the book […] there was an unspoken understand: Bring the socialist utopia. This is their manifest. Message is: Everyone in government has been lying to you. That’s why they call for an insurrection. This is evil stuff. These are the things that will free the worker.” (the transcript on fox news webiste is inaccurate)

It shouldn’t come as a suprise for those familiar with Tiqqun and the Tarnac affair. One could safely predict that the book will fall off the English bestsellers list in a few weeks. We should just remember that the social phenomenon this book takes (or is trying to take) into account is in no way limited to the sales of the book itself.

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art magazine illustration girls teenager intellectual book humor cartoon reblog

✖ Via Lady, That’s My Skull blog: “Velma’s Secret Origin” (published in Calling All Girls, January 1947).

Calling All Girls was an American teen magazine. Read more on Wikipedia.

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art poster design animal illustration illustrator man monster revenge book author classic water sea boat violence lost

✖ Via KN | Kitsune Noir: “KN/PC Presents: Inside Look at Mark Weaver”

Poster design by Mark Weaver inspired by the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851). The poster was designed for the Kitsune Noir Poster Club.

Follow the link to read an interview with Cody Hoyt about his creative process.

Previously on Skandalon : Mark Weaver, Kitsune Noir

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Broadbent: … I find the world quite good enough for me - rather a jolly place, in fact.
Keegan (looking at him with quiet wonder): You are satisfied?
Broadbent: As a reasonable man, yes. I see no evils in the world - except of course, natural evils - that cannot be remedied by freedom, self-government and English institutions. I think so, not because I am an Englishman, but as a matter of common sense.
Keegan: You feel at home in the world then?
Broadbent: Of course, Don’t you?
Keegan (from the very depths of his nature): No.

✖ Via John Bull’s Other Island by Bernard Shaw, 1904, Act IV §ii.

This is the epigraph for Colin Wilson’s 1956 book The Oustider [Amazon]. I first learn about Wilsom’s book via Another Nickel In The Machine

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The knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion

✖ Via The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872, § 7 (tr. by Ian Johnston, 2009)

Compare with a similar observation by Paul Valery.

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