“The way in which humans deal with physical objects has been formed by extensive interaction and, according to the theory of embodied cognition, has led to conceptualization and interpretation that is grounded in physical interaction of the body with elements in the environment. Digital objects are immaterial and cannot show similar external properties as physical objects, and further, they are representational in nature. Specific problems related to their immaterial nature are those of permanence, location, and ownership…It is concluded that the importance of the distinction between direct physical objects and immaterial objects has been vastly underestimated, at the cost of usability, trust and security.”
—Don G Bouwhuis, (2006) “Perception and interpretation of internet information: accessibility, validity and trust”, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 4 Iss: 1, pp.7 – 16
via Private Circulation
Private Circulation: a renegade publication meant for 32 lb paper, archived decidedly nowhere save the email boxes of those who have subscribed for free, reminds us that we have, at times, chosen luddite language to articulate the potential of social media. With Philip K. Dick’s estate suing Google for using the name Android, and Apple looking to H.G. Wells for nomenclature, I wonder if linguistic nostalgia is important to making today’s Electric Sheep seem more like dreams come true.
Cooliris: a new 3d image wall plug-in that allows you gorgeous, high-speed, gesture-sensitive spacial navigation of image search returns. Honestly, it’s kind of blowing my mind, although one could argue it belongs to the already well developed “cover-flow” model or the iPhone “touch and flick” generation.
Why limp through 20 pages of google images (next, next, next), when you can whip down a wall of all your options erstwhile rotating, enlarging and culling metadata?
Below is a screenshot from my search of the NY Public Library Digital Gallery, although perhaps the more meta example would have been my google image search for “Cooliris” which I navigated using Cooliris to find the picture above. My keyword on NYPL was “romance.”
A kind of dorky demo in video form here.
Back in September, I added Sexy Librarian to Amazon’s Kindle catalog, thereby subscribing to the terms and conditions of Amazon’s Digital Text Platform. Today I received an email that these terms would be amended in 15 days.
Here is a list of the changes, which, incidentally, I agreed to:
• Section 2: We modified the procedures for amending the terms of the Agreement.
• Section 3: We modified the termination provision, including by providing that you or we may terminate the Agreement at any time.
• Section 4: We added provisions relating to eligibility to participate in the Program, account information, and account security, including that you may only maintain 1 account at a time, and that if you have multiple accounts, you will have 30 days to consolidate your accounts.
• Section 5.1: We added provisions relating to delivery, content requirements, rejection, withdrawal, and reformatting of Digital Books.
• Section 5.3.1: We modified the provision regarding list prices for Digital Books.
• Section 5.4.2: We removed the obligation to have a U.S. bank account to participate in the Program, to allow international publishers to participate in the Program. We also added a provision for circumstances under which we are entitled to withhold payments for a period of time.
• Section 5.6: We added a provision regarding our use of geofiltering technology.
• Section 5.7: We added a rights dispute resolution provision relating to claims of copyright infringement.
• Section 7: We added a provision covering confidential information.
Right now I’m interested in:
