The Late Age of Print

Beyond the Book

Browsing Posts tagged Amazon.com

OR, HOW TO SAVE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES ONE E-BOOK AT A TIME Several weeks ago I mentioned the “Cultures of Books and Reading” class I’m teaching this semester at Indiana University.  It’s been a blast so far.  My students have had so many provocative things to say about the present and future of book culture.  More [...]

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Lest there be any confusion, yes, indeed, you’re reading The Late Age of Print blog, still authored by me, Ted Striphas.  The last time you visited, the site was probably red, white, black, and gray.  Now it’s not.  I imagine you’re wondering what prompted the change. The short answer is: a hack.  The longer answer [...]

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I’ve spent the last few weeks here auditioning ideas for my next book, on the topic of  “algorithmic culture.”  By this I mean the use of computers and complex mathematical routines to sort, classify, and create hierarchies for our many forms of human expression and association. I’ve been amazed by the reception of these posts, [...]

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Last week I was interviewed on probably the best talk radio program about culture and technology, the CBC’s Spark. The interview grew out of my recent series of blog posts on the topic of algorithmic culture.  You can listen to the complete interview, which lasts about fifteen minutes, by following the link on the Spark [...]

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In my previous post I addressed the question, who speaks for culture in an algorithmic age?  My claim was that humanities scholars once held significant sway over what ended up on our cultural radar screens but that, today, their authority is diminishing in importance.  The work of sorting, classifying, hierarchizing, and curating culture now falls [...]

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I’ve blogged off and on over the past 15 months about “algorithmic culture.”  The subject first came to my attention when I learned about the Amazon Kindle’s “popular highlights” feature, which aggregates data about the passages Kindle owners have deemed important enough to underline. Since then I’ve been doing a fair amount of algorithmic culture [...]

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I’ve been struck this start of the school year by the proliferation of textbook rental outfits here in Bloomington, Indiana and elsewhere.  Locally there’s TXTBookRental Bloomington, which brokers exclusively in rented course texts, as well as TIS and the IU Bookstore (operated by Barnes & Noble), both of whom sell books in addition to offering [...]

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What a difference a few years can make.  I’m talking about the proliferation of e-reading devices among my Indiana University undergraduates — devices that were virtually non-existent in their lives not so very long ago.  Let me explain. In 2006, I piloted a course based loosely on The Late Age of Print called “The Cultures [...]

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It’s been awfully quiet around here for the past six weeks or so.  I’ve had a busy summer filled with travel, academic writing projects, and quality time with my young son.  Blogging, regretfully, ended up falling by the wayside. I’m pleased to announce that The Late Age of Print is back after what amounted to [...]

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About a week ago Michael Eisen, who teaches evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley, blogged about a shocking discovery one of his postdocs had made in early April.  The discovery happened not in his lab, but of all places on Amazon.com. While searching the site for a copy of Peter Lawrence’s book The Making of a [...]

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