Picking on traditional media has become a tiresome sport. Much more interesting to explore successful new models than complain about the old gang aren’t getting it right.

Still, it’s hard to swallow an article made up almost exclusively of quotes from various other thinkers, about how dangerous mash-ups are. If “cherry picking” ideas and mixing them into a shortened digital version, quotable at the water-cooler, or on Twitter, is such a terrible thing, what is Kakutani doing writing a mash-up of cherry-picked ideas and mixing them into a shortened digital version, quotable at the water-cooler or on Twitter?

The “problem,” I think, is humans themselves. Unfortunately, this is what we like to do with information: we absorb it, process it, shorten it, and reassemble it… and then share and comment and talk about it.

It always surprises me that there aren’t more articles about the dangers of one-on-one conversations: after all – shouldn’t we be worried about, “the fragmentation of data that the conversations produce, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into verbal words and sentences shared between people at cafes everywhere; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses of the person in front of you; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our discussions; and the emphasis that conversation places on subjectivity.”

The real danger to the future of humanity is not the web, it’s much deeper: it’s is lurking in every conversation over a coffee or beer that anyone has ever enjoyed. The real danger isn’t bits and bytes, it’s our desire to talk about the things that interest us. God help us all.

If Kakutani & her sources can figure out how to eradicate our urge to communicate, they’ll solve the lesser problem presented by technologies that let us communicate as we always have.

There are many reasons that we should carefully consider technology, and figure out how to use it to do more interesting things. But finding ways to stop people talking about things they care about, and making art out of things they love, or contextualizing information with commentary and curation, is not high on my list.

Dearest LibriVox listeners, volunteers, & supporters:

For four-and-a-half years, LibriVox volunteers have been making audiobooks for the world to enjoy, and giving them away for free. We’ve made thousands of free audiobooks that have been downloaded by millions of people; our site gets 400,000 visitors every month. To date, all our costs have been borne by a few individuals, with some generous donations from partners. However, these costs have become too big.
See below to FIND OUT HOW TO DONATE (Or, keep reading!).

LibriVox needs your help.

We’re asking for donations for the following:
to cover hosting costs for our website (about $5,000/year), which includes: the site you are reading now; the forum; the wiki; the catalog; but does NOT include hosting audio files which is done by Archive.org
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We expect this fund-raising drive to sustain us for three years at least.

For more info, and how to donate.

The question you might ask yourself is: who is creating all that text? Well, if you are reading this, there’s a good chance that you are.

You might ask another question: who’s going to edit all that text? And if you are reading this, we’re hoping you’ll help with some of it.

Connecting Writers, Readers, and Word-lovers

That’s why we built Bite-Size Edits: so that people who write text can connect with people who can improve it. Usually that implies a vice versa.

Last month, we announced that we’d split Bite-Size Edits out of Book Oven, but it was a very barebones affair: text in, editing, text out. But while editing is the reason for the existence of Bite-Size Edits, the real power lies in connecting writers, readers, editors and people who love words.

We’ve just released a whole host of new social features: contacts, random editing, privacy controls on texts, and much more. We’ve built in some gamish stuff too – everything you do in Bite-Size Edits will win you points, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Try It, It’s Fun!

So, we invite you to come take a look at the new Bite-Size Edits, to add some text for editing, and even better, to do some editing yourself.

Bite-Size Edits is a work-in-progress, and we’d love to get your feedback, suggestions, as well as your complaints.

You can tell us what you think by:

* sending us an email at: contact AT bitesizeedits DOT com

* @’ing us on Twitter at: @bookoven or @bitesizeedits

* submitting bug reports or user feedback at: http://feedback.bitesizeedits.com

1. Log into Gmail
2. Scroll down to bottom of the page
3. Click: “Turn off Buzz”

UPDATE: See here (Thanks Karl!): http://www.scotxblog.com/legal-tech/lawyer-privacy-on-google-buzz/

You can follow the Google Blog for more information.

Anyway, there we were with two choices: Bicycle Thief and Doctor Zhivago.

Not knowing which to choose, I asked Twitter, and from thence flowed a stream of opinions, a 50-50 split between the two (we went with Bicycle Thief; a bit on the dismal side, to be honest). At some point, my wife yelled: “Stop looking at Twitter and watch the movie!” … because I kept a running tally, shouting out “another for Zhivago” and “oh, so-and-so thinks we made the right choice.”

This story was related by my wife to some non-Tiwtterites, who were in awe of this strange and magical tool that elicited such information, like some digital Oracle of Delphi.

Just a few days ago, I had yet another Delphesian experience on Twitter. I needed a third book to fill out an online book order and get free shipping (the other two books I wanted – Bolano’s 2666 and Elise Blackwell’s Hunger – are not available as ebooks in Canada). And so, I asked Twitter.

And here, for the record, is a list of what the Oracles of Twitter answered (Note: where links were not provided, I will link to whatever comes up first in the Google):

@jbeswick: “The Atomic Obsession” – great read

@seancranbury: goddammit, hugh! Monstrous Affections
or this is really good Unknown Soldier Vol. 1: Haunted House

@janinelaporte: True Deceiver is great. Buy that one Hugh to get your free shipping

@seancranbury: how’s this? Monsieur Pain

@danwagstaff: I keep hearing great things about True Deceiver by Tove Jansson + Blue Fox by Sjon.

@karenjones4: six pixels of separation is great! :) im a media hacks listener! Heard good things about Blue Oceans Strategy, next on my list.

@FNHPodcast: How about “Vulcan 607”

@michaelerard: governing the commons, by Elinor Ostrom.

@jenni_fleur: “Recital” by John Siddique….UK poet.

@chebuctonian: Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

@jmcd77: War of Art

@somisguided: eating the dinosaur by chuck klosterman

@dknippling: When in doubt about what book to get, get Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds.

@jforrest: Zeitoun

@marianslibrary: Have you read 13 1/2 by Nevada Barr? It’s a thriller.

@chriskingstl: Bohumil Hrabal, “I served the King of England”; anything by Robert Walser; anything by Charles Nicholl (Reckoning, The Lodger…)

@D3WEY: that’s a shame it’s amazing like climbing literary mount everest — have you read Updike’s Rabbit series?

@ShireenJ: Mine. :P Seriously though, “Lifeliner” has had good reviews and is a fast read.

@openmargin: The Collaborative Habit by Twyla Tharp?

@jambina: new Michael Chabon?

@lorissa: If you enjoy fantasty reads, I’d suggest The Name of the WInd by Patrick Rothfuss.

@subumom: Have you read the Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa?

@echobase77: Mistborn by @BrandonSandrson!

goldenpen80: Try Razor’s Edge by Maugham, if u haven’t already. Short, sweet, and absolutely sublime.

I chose Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, well before all the other recommendations came in. I’ll let you know what I think of it sometime.

On principle, I don’t like it. MPs are elected and are supposed to represent us in parliament. Which they cannot do when parliament is suspended early. Because of the Olympics? Come on. The Olympics? You have to be kidding.

Anyway, why not put voice to your annoyance at a democratic government that wants to govern outside of democracy? Some ways to do it:

1. Join the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook Group.

2. Email Harper & tell him you don’t like it: pm@pm.gc.ca … you could say:

Dear Mr. Harper,

Canada is supposed to be a democracy. For democracy to function, our elected officials are supposed to represent us in Parliament, which they cannot do because of yet another prorogued session. Please reconsider, and get our MPs back to work.

3. Email your MP (mine is Tom Mulcair: Mulcair.T@parl.gc.ca) and tell them you don’t like it:

Dear Mr. Mulcair:

I am writing to you register my strong disapproval at the government’s decision to prorogue parliament. Please do everything in your power to help MPs get back to work soon.

4. email the Governor General: info@gg.ca

Dear Ms. Jean:

I am writing to you register my strong disapproval at the government’s decision to prorogue parliament, again; and your agreement with the decision. Our parliament is supposed to represent the people of Canada, which it can’t do while suspended.

RESPONSES:
Response from Mulcair’s office:

Dear Mr. McGuire,

On behalf of Thomas Mulcair, Member of Parliament for Outremont, I acknowledge receipt of your e-mail.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the shutting down of Parliament by Mr. Harper. We share your outrage.

Stephen Harper is locking out Members of Parliament, preventing them from doing the very important work they were elected to do.

By pulling the plug on Parliament, Stephen Harper killed 36 government legislations which were making progress, including bills dealing with important issues such as consumer protection, white collar crimes or digital policy. It is our view that this is a further attempt by the Harper Government to avoid being held accountable for torture issues in Afghanistan.

The NDP Caucus had a retreat planned the week before the scheduled return of Parliament. The meeting will go ahead as planned,
and NDP MPs will attend and discuss the strategy for the next few months.

Sincerely,

Mathilde Rogue
Adjointe parlementaire
Parliamentary assistant
___________________________________________________________

Thomas Mulcair, député/MP Outremont
Tél. : 514 736-2727
mulcat@parl.gc.ca

1password ($39.95). I don’t know what unit stress is measured in, but every time I see a web login page the little needle on the gauge attached to my ear starts bouncing. Considering I see about 10,000 login pages everyday, that adds up. 1password is an encrypted, desktop password manager, that integrates seamlessly with my browsers (FF & Safari at least). Every time I register for a new site, I tell 1password to remember the password. So now instead of having a list of 1,000 login details in some “secret” excel file, everything is stored and encrypted in 1password. All I need to do is remember one password, and just login once per usage session. This changed my life completely. It’s expensive, OK, but so worth it.

Skitch (Free) Almost every day, it seems, I want to take a screenshot of something, and mark it up a little, to explain how to do something, to comment on a site/design, to quickly (re)post an image to the web. Skitch is a simple little tool that does this and more. It’s a: screengrabber, image marker-upper, and image post-to-webber (and image host) all in one. It is the ugliest program that I use, but man do I love it.

Dropbox (free –> $19.99) Ever pour water on your computer and have to get a new one? Yeah, me too. Luckily, all my important files are stored on dropbox, which is: a) a little app on your machine that b) syncs selected folders with your online dropbox account. You can sync that account with multiple computers too. It is so easy & so seamless, I forgot that big brother can read everything in the cloud. Free for up to 2G, and $9.99/month for up to 50G. $19.99 for 100G. There’s even an iphone app, so you’ve always got your files at your fingertips. I just recently upgraded to the 50G dropbox.

Grand Perspective (free): What is taking up all the space on my damned hard drive? GrandPerspective will tell you, by showing you a “picture” of what’s on your drive, with the memory hogs represented by big squares. The colours are god-awful, but if you want to clean stuff out, it’s a great way to find out what.

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