The murmur of the snarkmatrix…

Jennifer § Two songs from The Muppet Movie / 2021-02-12 15:53:34
A few notes on daily blogging § Stock and flow / 2017-11-20 19:52:47
El Stock y Flujo de nuestro negocio. – redmasiva § Stock and flow / 2017-03-27 17:35:13
Meet the Attendees – edcampoc § The generative web event / 2017-02-27 10:18:17
Does Your Digital Business Support a Lifestyle You Love? § Stock and flow / 2017-02-09 18:15:22
Daniel § Stock and flow / 2017-02-06 23:47:51
Kanye West, media cyborg – MacDara Conroy § Kanye West, media cyborg / 2017-01-18 10:53:08
Inventing a game – MacDara Conroy § Inventing a game / 2017-01-18 10:52:33
Losing my religion | Mathew Lowry § Stock and flow / 2016-07-11 08:26:59
Facebook is wrong, text is deathless – Sitegreek !nfotech § Towards A Theory of Secondary Literacy / 2016-06-20 16:42:52

Book Update: First Deadlines, Production Brainstorm
 / 

Wow! We’re off to a great start towards a book on the new liberal arts. How do I know? My scrollbar gets teeeeny-tiny when I click that link.

We’re talking about potential NLAs like archiving, attention economics, branding, collaboration, home economics, mapping, micropolitics, photography, play, urbanism, writing for computers — the list goes on and on. And I’m realizing that we’re going to have to get good at a bunch of these new skills, fast, just to make this thing.

So what comes next? Starting this weekend, we’ll reach out to some contributors from the comment thread on that original post; then, we’ll all spend the next week writing and editing. The deadline for copy will be Monday, February 16.

After that… we design the book!

Then, of course, there’s printing; we’re thinking hard about that step. If you have any tips, insights, or leads related to that part of the process, we’d love to hear them. You can leave a comment on this post or send an email: Is there a printing company you love? Some new print-on-demand scheme that we should know about? Elephant poop paper? Etc.

Look for another book update early next week. And, if you haven’t yet suggested a new liberal art of your own — now is precisely the time! Jump in.

Seriously, look at that scrollbar. It’s barely there.

7 comments

(I’m kidding; under no circumstances will we print this book on elephant poop paper.)

/ Reply

In the nineteenth century, people really did experiment with manure to make paper. Not sure about elephants, though.

/ Reply

This thread, and the book that will issue from it, is of the greatest interest to me, because I am devoting my four year-old site, The Daily Blague, to humanism. Not “secular humanism”

/ Reply

RJ, Thanks for your lovely note. Let me just add that I (I can’t and most likely don’t speak for Matt and Robin) definitely agree that it’s really the industrial revolution and the changes that wrought, not just to work and society and technology but to culture, that we’re trying to come to grips with. The role played by developments on the web or elsewhere in the past ten years is comparatively small.

Don’t get me wrong — I think the changes brought by the internet and electronic communications more broadly are real, BUT I think that one of the big things that is happening now, in no small part thanks to these breakthroughs, is that we’re finally better able to understand what the industrial revolution’s global effects really were.

One of my favorite jokes from Futurama goes like this:

FRY: Hey, you have no right to criticize the twentieth century! We gave the world the light bulb, the steam boat and the cotton gin.

LEELA: Those things are all from the nineteenth century.

FRY: Yeah, well, they probably just copied us.

/ Reply
Joanna says…

This project has some folks excited at the university where I work, although your deadline is blazingly fast compared to anything that could come out of our conversations!

thought the themes of this conference would be relevant:

http://dac09.uci.edu/

http://dac09.uci.edu/call.html

/ Reply

Thanks for the link, Joanna — super-interesting!

And yes… we are working at Internet Speed (TM) 🙂

/ Reply

NO! I want the Elephant Poop Paper!!! Why are you kidding? That made me so happy!

Or try banana paper. That stuff is so smoooooooth.

/ Reply