Odyssey Online

…recently Derek Thompson put up an interesting post at Atlantic.com titled Where is the E-Reader Revolution Leading Us? which argues that e-readers are pushing technologies toward a Swiss Army Knife model: a mobile technology that can do many things.  It actually seems to me that the e-reader (with all thy faults I love thee still…) is more akin to Donald Norman’s idea of an information appliance, well articulated in his book The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products can Fail, the Personal Computer is so Complex, and Information Appliances are the Solution. Norman makes a convincing case for what an information appliance could be and could do…

…his book The Psychology of Everyday Things (subsequent editions are titled Design of Everyday Things) is essential reading on the day-to-day implications of design…

…this being National Potato Day we can direct the SLU community to the wonderfully named John Reader’s wonderfully titled book Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

…also, on the broader topic of our relationship to information (if not potatoes) Jessica Hagy on her blog Indexed has a really very simple and very striking visualization of the relationship between confusion and information…

…since the Obama Administration’s ruling on supporting network neutrality (reported on here at Odyssey Online), the debate has come more into public focus, the politics of said have become a little sharper.  The Washington Post reported that the FCC is drafting the specific rules that will keep ” Internet providers as acting like gatekeeprs,” and also reported that CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, favors network neutrality but thought it would be “a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.” Atlantic Magazine provides ran a useful Political Primer on network neutrality, identifying the players and what they are after.

…this from today’s edition of the New York Times on proposed cuts announced yesterday by Governor Paterson:

Hundreds of programs face cuts — libraries stand to lose $3.3 million, summer programs for special education students face a $10.4 million cut, and more than $14 million would be cut from Child Health Plus, a public insurance program. At least 31 H.I.V./AIDS programs also face cuts.

Tough situation. On a happier Friday note,  here are two new uplifting titles about libraries:

• Libraries for All! How to Start and Run a Basic Library by Laura Wendell
• The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World photgraphs by Guillaume de Laubeir and text by Jacques Bosser

Optimistic reading for reading days…

…from the Washington Post, a well written article about twenty-somethings who do not social network. While it is not Civil Disobedience there are some interesting comments made about social networking platforms–what they are and what they result in–by “ordinary folks,” not professional commentators.  A very useful article in terms of how people define genuine experience…

…last year the OCLC, the company that constructs Worldcat and is our major cataloging utility, announced a change in policy which, by every objective measure, seemed to be an attempt to grab every catalog record for any library that catalogued using OCLC and claim it for their own. Caused an uproar.  The Smithsonian Libraries blog has a useful overview of what was and should be done…

…by 12:30 p.m. today, roughly half an hour after Mr. Obama’s inaguration, the Obama team had swapped out the Bush administration design for Whitehouse.gov and replaced it with their own. Here is an image of the Bush adminstration template saved yesterday afternoon, and still in place around 11:30 this morning (last time I checked). By 12:30 today one finds…this page.  The web team apparently beat the motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue…

…one of the great traditions of Friday afternoon blogging is…kicking someone when they’re down.  The relentlessness of the current recession can now be proved by the fact that Google is retrenching, AP has the story.  If it can happen to Google it can happen to…

Recently the SLU IT Department concluded another successful Techfest, a gathering of people from across the SLU community to discuss and explore applications of networked information technologies in the curriculum. It got me remembering this short piece by Phil Agre on “How to Help Someone Use a Computer.”  Dr. Agre has published a number of works on institutions and networked information technology, and for a long time ran an e-mail update service on said called The Red Rock Eater that was wonderful.  This little essay on helping someone with a computer is eloquent, and right on the money. Worth a read with the students returning Monday…

…honoring Friday afternoon content-gathers who do things like chronicle the 500 most common passwords that people use. Who thinks of a need to do this stuff–although at a presentation today (see previous post) I also commented on a Firefox add-on that translate any web page you find into Esperanto.

Also, one of the ongoing interests in Odyssey Online is blogging and the relationship between blogging and journalism.  Whether you realize it or not, the New York Times and many major urban papers are facing troubled waters (and where facing them even before the current recession).  There are several plausible scenarios of the Times folding out there, and for something that seemed like such a major American Institution: that’s news.  Michael Hirschorn has written an interesting piece outlining how the NYT can survive and emerge as a viable business.  Not the cheeriest Friday afternoon reading, but an important topic for the American information ecosystem…