Skip to main content

postprintproject

The post print project is thinking about how mobile devices and networked media "could redefine how we do a couple of very basic things: how we tell stories and how we learn."
(postprintproject.com)

I'm fascinated with this.

I believe story telling is bound to the way our brains evolved and isn't really going to change much no matter what technology does. The networked and mobile space we inhabit could change how we learn and use information. I think it already has. I've been reading Jane Austen's novels as Gutenberg etexts on the iphone. The iphone is passable as a reader. I've not got eyestrain yet. I find it hasn't done anything new, but it has restored reading as a regular activity for me. I hate reading at the computer. I'm too lazy to go to the library (I'd have to drive across town to the central library where all the really good books are). Its just too easy to pick up the iphone, download a new book and start reading. That is different. I am unwilling to do this on the desktop computer.

I think the uniqueness will come from how mobile network devices let us assemble small bits of information together, get timely information, communicate with friends easily, or keep to ourselves in a private moments of reading or listening to music. It might influence learning by enabling people to draw together different sources right in the palm of their hand while they are experiencing something, which is often important for learning.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Tweets

I see a new kind of writing being created on Twitter, including hashtags, mixed into the text, in a variety of creative ways. In future, we should see a system that allows users to make these kind of connections, but without needing to include obscure computer-like commands in their text. I sometimes feel I'm reading a Linux command line or script when reading some tweets. Sometimes, it takes a moment to figure out what the tweet means.

Blogging the Archives

A vital interest of mine is access to archives. I've been interested in the possibilities inherent in the web and network for increasing access to archives and enabling a greater number of non-academics to browse, organize and surface archive holdings. One of the most significant ways of exposing the holdings of an archives is blogging the contents. We really haven't got there yet, but I've noticed a small trend, which I hope signifies the beginning of exponential growth, of people blogging artifacts. I do not remember the first site I came across where a blogger was posting pictures of artifacts, usually photographs from an online catalog of a museum, but here are some recent finds. Illustration Art All Edges Gilt If we could just get every artifact in the world's museums and archives photographed or scanned and online, give the tools to blog the contents to millions of ordinary people interested in telling the stories of these cultural objects, think of how rich that ...

Snowball, the Dancing Bird

A video of a dancing bird has become the latest YouTube sensation. Some people thought the bird's performance was faked, but for me, it is not surprising, given the sophisticated ability birds demonstrate for manipulating pitch and rhythm in their songs, that a bird shows the ability to keep time with music. Neuroscientists, including John Iversen of the Neurosciences Institute, have studied the dancing bird and confirm it is capable of extracting a beat from sound. What impressed me most about Snowball's performance is when he lifts his leg and gives it a little shake before bringing it down. As the investigators mention, it may be prompted by the pace being too fast to put his foot all the way down in time with the faster beat, but it piques my curiosity further. It appears Snowball is dividing the beat when he waves his foot, into two or three little waves, which if I am seeing it correctly, suggests birds are capable of division of the beat and perceiving and manipulating ...