tim carmody
Reading revolutions
Here is a link to Tim’s terrific new post over at The Atlantic, provided for your convenience. Like I said on Twitter:
@tcarmody I love that your magisterial media history post totally has a Demand Media headline. Nicely done.
I love the fact that Gutenberg’s press represents just one of ten revolutions here, and I love Tim’s characterization of it:
2. Outside of scholarly circles, the top candidate is usually the better-known Print Revolution, usually associated with Johannes Gutenberg, who helped introduce movable type to Europe. Now, as Andrew Pettegree’s new history The Book in the Renaissance shows, the early years of print were much messier than advertised: no one knew quite what to do with this technology, especially how to make money off of it.
“No one knew quite what to do with this technology.” I can’t tell you much I love that—how heartening I find it. It means we probably haven’t even figured out what the web is really good for yet.
But yo, Tim, I’ve got beef: where’s the paperback revolution in your list?
The Tim Berners-Lee of Green Bay
Tim had a hilarious run of tweets today, detailing the shocking parallels between the history of the web and the history of, er, Brett Favre. Jason recapitulated it nicely, and it made me think I ought to open up an app I’ve been meaning to try, called Storify. (One of the brains behind Storify is Burt Herman, who organizes the Hacks and Hackers meetups.) So I did, and here’s another way of looking at Tim’s tweets:
What do you think? (Of the tweet presentation, that is, not the tweet content. The tweet content is hilarious.) Useful? Readable?
Note: one big down-side is that the tweets don’t show up in Google Reader. Well, Reader crew, click on over and check it out.
The other master class
Can I get a slow clap for Tim’s run over on Kottke this week? To my eye, it’s been totally true to the spirit of Jason’s site, but also very different from the kind of thing he usually does. Which is perfect! Why have guest-bloggers otherwise?
Also, like I said on Twitter:
Wow @tcarmody’s stint over at @kottke is turning into a Borgesian spectacle in which he connects everything to everything else in five days.
Unexpected: The thread of Islamic history. Also, videos! Lots of ‘em! (I spent a few minutes trying to make a BYO remix with this Koko the clown cartoon but discovered nothing beats the native soundtrack.)
Anyway: here, I’ll get it started
Tim Carmody, paleoblogger
Tim’s guest-blogging for Jason Kottke this week! Follow him there! It’s gonna be good! Paleoblogging, people!
One of his first posts, about the city (and idea) of Cordoba, is ace. I was impressed with myself while reading it because I knew some of the history already; that’s thanks to Destiny Disrupted, a new-ish history of the world told from an Islamic POV. It’s the best book I’ve read in months; I’ll have more to say about it at some point.