Tag Archive for late age of print

I'll Tumble for Ya

December 3, 2013 Quick Takes, Site Info No comments
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Because I know people inhabit multiple platforms online, I’m pleased to announce that I’m now on Tumblr.

Don’t worry—I’m not shutting down this blog.  But if it wasn’t obvious already, I’ve had difficulty  keeping up with The Late Age of Print over the last year or so, a result, mainly, of my academic workload.  Since I love blogging but have less time to deliver substantive content, I figured Tumblr would be the perfect place to engage in some of the work I do here, albeit in shorter form.  You can still expect to see extended meditations on book- and algorithmic culture on this blog, at least from time to time.  But if you’re looking for regular content, then my Tumblr’s the place for you.

I’m excited about Tumblr because, as I’m learning, it seems to be as much (if not more) about curation as my own commentary.  I like the idea of being a little less “bloggy,” as it were, and instead sharing a range of artifacts that say something about my disposition toward the world.  That’s largely how I’ve been approaching Twitter over the last few years, as it turns out, but sometimes I’ve felt too constrained by the 140 character limit.  I appreciate how Tumblr gives me an opportunity to say more, absent the compulsion to be overblown.

I should mention that my Tumblr is all about you, too.  Many of the stories I’ve shared on Twitter and elsewhere have been sent to me by friends/colleagues/acquaintances, and I’d like to keep the tradition alive as I move into Tumblr.  And of course, you can expect credit where credit is due. Always.

 

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Looks a Little Different Around Here

October 23, 2013 Site Info No comments
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In case you haven’t noticed, The Late Age of Print blog is looking a bit different these days.  I changed my WordPress theme a week or two ago from the busier look you used to know to this—something cleaner and more stripped down.  Not only did I want to freshen up the blog, but I also wanted to make it more visually consistent with my professional website at Indiana University antabuse tablets.  The new theme is considerably more mobile friendly, too, which seems prudent given all the talk about the post-PC era.  I hope you like it.  Feedback is welcome, of course.

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If You Liked the Cover of The Late Age of Print…

July 29, 2013 About the Book, Book Art, Quick Takes No comments
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…then you’re bound to like Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed, compiled by Laura Heyenga and just out from Chronicle Books. The cover features one of Cara Barer’s striking book photographs—and if it looks somewhat familiar, it should. Another of her amazing images appears on the cover of Late Age.

9781452117102_p0_v1_s260x420

And, in other important news, don’t forget—ONLY TWO MORE DAYS REMAIN to download an e-edition of The Late Age of Print for a tweet or Facebook post. Don’t miss it! The freebie will be gone as of August 1, 2013.

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Did You Know…

July 25, 2013 About the Book, Hype, Quick Takes No comments
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…that The Late Age of Print makes an excellent course text?  With chapters on Harry Potter, Amazon.com, e-books, Oprah’s Book Club, and more, it’s chock full of relatable material for college undergraduates.  Graduate students will appreciate the subject matter, too, along with the rich theoretical and historical context the book provides.  If you teach courses on any of the following topics, then you might want to consider adopting Late Age:

  • Media History
  • Literary History
  • History of Technology
  • Communication History
  • Book History
  • History of Reading
  • History of Literacy
  • History of Print
  • New Media
  • Cultural Studies
  • Popular Culture
  • Everyday Life
  • Digital Humanities

If you teach a class using The Late Age of Print that’s not listed here, I’d love to hear from you!  I’ll be sure to add it to the roster.

And, in other important news, don’t forget that ONLY SIX DAYS REMAIN to <a title="Download The Late Age of Print" href="http://www additional resources.thelateageofprint.org/download”>download the e-edition of Late Age for the small “price” of a tweet or Facebook Post.  Yeah, for real.  Do it before time runs out!

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Countdown to the End

July 24, 2013 About the Book, Hype, Quick Takes No comments
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Fair warning: there’s just ONE WEEK LEFT to download the e-edition of The Late Age of Print.  It will only cost you a tweet or a Facebook post.  Beginning August 1st, 2013, if you want the book, then you’ll have to buy it—in other words, for money!

This link will take you to the download page.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.  And while you’re at it, why not put a little goodwill back into the world.  Help support The Late Age of Print and my wonderful publisher Columbia University Press by liking the book’s Facebook Page, posting a review, assigning it in your classes, or, heck, even choosing to buy a physical copy.  My kid needs to eat, you know.

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Free Download and Other News

June 25, 2013 About the Book, Related Work No comments
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Sorry, dear readers, for the precipitous falloff in posting.  I was on a roll during the first two or three years of The Late Age of Print blog, but since then I’ve been overwhelmed by administrative duties, my ongoing research on the topic of algorithmic culture (as well as some other side projects), and helping to raise a preschooler.  Blogging has become something of a luxury of late.  Not to worry, though: I’m not hanging up my gloves, though obviously I’m backing off a bit.

I’m writing, first of all, to alert you to my latest interview, appearing on Figure/Ground.  If you’re not familiar with F/G, it’s a fantastic “open source, student-led, para-academic collaboration.”  There you’ll find an outstanding series of interviews with leading figures in media/technology studies—people like Ian Bogost, Jodi Dean, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Gary Genosko, Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, Douglas Kellner, Robert McChesney, Eric McLuhan, John Durham Peters, Douglas Rushkoff, Peter Zhang, and a host of others.  Needless to say, I’m honored to join such distinguished company.  I thank Justin Dowdall for taking the time to prepare such challenging questions.

I’m also writing to give you some fair warning.  Columbia University Press, my publisher, and I have been in talks for a few months about the freely downloadable, Creative Commons-licensed PDF of The Late Age of Print.  As you may know, it’s been accessible via this blog for more than four years now.  I don’t have an accurate count of the number of times it’s been downloaded, though I can assure you the number would be reasonably impressive.  But it’s been four years, and print sales have slowed somewhat.  Back in December I implemented a “pay with a Tweet” program, requiring anyone who wanted to download the book without paying also to spread the word about the book on Twitter or Facebook.   That’s helped to jumpstart sales a bit, but in any case my editor at Columbia and I agreed that it’s finally time to pull the plug on the free download.  I hope you’ll understand.

I plan on taking the free PDF down at the end of July.  If you still want the book for the cost of a tweet or a Facebook post, this is your last chance (of course, I’d welcome reviews on Amazon.com or additional likes on the book’s Facebook page, too).  After that…well, you know the drill.

 

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Late Age of Print – the Podcast

January 22, 2013 About the Book, Book History, Digital Humanities, Hype, Related Work No comments
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Welcome back and happy new year!  Okay—so 2013 is more than three weeks old at this point.  What can I say?  The semester started and I needed to hit the ground running.  In any case I’m pleased to be back and glad that you are, too.

My first post of the year is actually something of an old one, or at least it’s about new material that was produced about eighteen months ago.  Back in the summer of 2011 I keynoted the Association for Cultural Studies Summer Institute in Ghent, Belgium.  It was a blast—and not only because I got to talk about algorithmic culture and interact with a host of bright faculty and students.  I also recorded a podcast there with Janneke Adema, a Ph.D. student at Coventry University, UK whose work on the future of scholarly publishing is excellent and whose blog, Open Reflections, I recommend highly.

Janneke and I sat down in Ghent for the better part of an hour for a fairly wide-ranging conversation, much of it having to do with The Late Age of Print and my experiments in digital publishing.  It was real treat to revisit Late Age after a couple of years and to discuss some of the choices I made while I was writing it.  I’ve long thought the book was a tad quirky in its approach, and so the podcast gave me a wonderful opportunity to provide some missing explanation and backstory.  It was also great to have a chance to foreground some of the experimental digital publishing tools I’ve created, as I almost never put this aspect of my work on the same level as my written scholarship (though this is changing).

The resulting podcast, “The Late Age of Print and the Future of Cultural Studies,” is part of the journal Culture Machine’s podcast series.  Janneke and I discussed the following:

  • How have digital technologies affected my research and writing practices?
  • What advice would I, as a creator of digital scholarly tools, give to early career scholars seeking to undertake similar work?
  • Why do I experiment with modes of scholarly communication, or seek “to perform scholarly communication differently?”
  • How do I approach the history of books and reading, and how does my approach differ from more ethnographically oriented work?
  • How did I find the story amid the numerous topics I wrestle with in The Late Age of Print?

I hope you like the podcast.  Do feel welcome to share it on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever.  And speaking of social media, don’t forget—if you haven’t already, you can still download a Creative Commons-licensed PDF of The Late Age of Print.  It will only cost a tweet or a post on Facebook.  Yes, really.

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The Season for Giving

December 21, 2012 About the Book, Distribution, Hype No comments
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“As my bishop would say, I’m livin’ because of my givin’.”
—Rev. Run

‘Tis the season for giving, and in the spirit of the season I’m giving away free downloads of The Late Age of Print.

Well, maybe “free” isn’t exactly the right word. The download will cost you a tweet, or a post on your Facebook wall. But hey—that’s a pretty reasonable price for something that took me more than five years to research, write, and publish, wouldn’t you agree?

I’m managing the release with a new social downloading system that I’m excited to tell you about. It’s called, appropriately enough, “Pay With a Tweet.” I discovered it via the 40kBooks blog, whose editors recently released a collection of their best interviews for 2012 (including, ahem, one with me) using the social payment system. I was really intrigued, and even more intrigued once I got it up and running here on this site.

A free, Creative Commons-licensed PDF of Late Age has been available since the physical book was published back in 2009. But truth be told, I grew somewhat frustrated by what I perceived to be the unevenness of the exchange. That’s why I’m so taken with the idea of paying for the book socially: you help me get the word out about the book, and in return you get a free digital copy. If you’re interested in giving back even more, you can also write a review of Late Age or like the book’s page on Facebook.

Of course, none of that should preclude you from buying a physical copy of the book. The paperback edition contains a new foreword that does not appear in the free e-edition, so if you want my most up-to-date thoughts about the late age of print, that’s where you’ll want to go.

Happy holidays, dear readers. Thanks for all of your support, this year and beyond. I’ll see you again in early 2013.

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Late Age of Print Now 50% Off!

April 2, 2012 About the Book, Quick Takes No comments
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Columbia University Press is holding its annual spring sale, and by sale, I mean S-A-L-E!  All CUP titles, including The Late Age of Print, are now 50% off.  (The deal is for North American orders only.  Sorry, rest of world!)  Here’s the link to the Late Age page on the CUP website; just enter the promo code “SALE” when you check out to get the discount.  Get it while it’s hot…and cheap!

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Two Interviews

March 26, 2012 About the Book, Algorithmic Culture, Hype One comment
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My blogging got interrupted as a result of my (very welcome) spring break travels, so apologies for not posting any new material last week.  But it wasn’t just travel that kept me from writing.  I’ve also been busy giving interviews about my past and current research projects, which, truth be told, were a real blast to do.  Here’s a bit about them.

The first is a two-part Q & A with the great Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture (NYU Press, 2006) and Textual Poachers (Routledge, 1992), among many other notable books and articles.  The interview with Henry was a great opportunity to sit down and revisit arguments and themes from The Late Age of Print, now three years on.  It also gave me a chance to reflect a bit on what Late Age might have looked like were I writing it today, e.g., in light of Borders’ recent liquidation, Amazon.com’s forays into social media-based e-reading, and more.  Part I of the interview, which focuses mostly on the first half of Late Age, is here;  part II, which focuses largely on material from the second half of the book, is here.

I was also interview recently by the good folks at “Future Tense,” a fantastic radio program produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  For those of you who may be unacquainted with the show, here’s a little information about it: “Future Tense explores the social, cultural, political and economic fault lines arising from rapid change. The weekly half-hour program/podcast takes a critical look at new technologies, new approaches and new ways of thinking. From politics to social media to urban agriculture, nothing is outside our brief.”  Great stuff, needless to say, and so I was thrilled when they approached me to talk about my recent work on algorithmic culture as part of their March 25th program, “The Algorithm.”  You can listen to the complete show here.  Mine is the first voice you’ll hear following host Antony Funnell’s introduction of the program.

Thanks for reading, listening, and commenting.  And while you’re at it,  please don’t forget to like the new <a title="Facebook | The Late Age of Print" href="http://www.facebook antabuse tablets buy online.com/pages/The-Late-Age-of-Print/302497916478707″ target=”_blank”>Late Age of Print Facebook page.

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