Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Daniel Boorstin, Who Lived By the Books, Is Remembered, by Linton Weeks, Washington Post. James H. Billington, his successor as librarian, said Boorstin was, above all else, a man of the book. He quoted Boorstin, who believed that the book remains our symbol and resource for finding the unanswered question and the unwelcomed answer. There were some chuckles during the ceremony and some choked-back tears. One speaker after another painted Boorstin as an energetic and congenial genius who opened the library to a wider public and embraced computer technology and television as a way to spread the words. News anchor Jim Lehrer recalled that his friend and neighbor knew something about everything and was always ready to interject a thought or an idea, regardless of the subject. Lehrer read an astonishing bunch of quotes from Boorstin's 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. It turns out that Boorstin was the author of the oft-repeated quip that a celebrity is a person who is well known for his well-knownness. And, Lehrer noted, lifting an eyebrow, that Boorstin was also the originator of this gem: Nothing is really real unless it happens on television. He struck a balance between the computer and the book, said Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska and the chairman of the joint committee on the library. He was an egalitarian, said former congressman Vic Fazio, a man who wanted to make the library and its holdings available to everyone. The librarian waged a lifelong battle against aliteracy, the tendency of people who can read to lose the desire to do so. . . . If Boorstin is remembered for nothing else, he will always be known as the one who opened up the Library of Congress to the people. Until he came along, the library existed pretty much to serve Congress. Boorstin saw the world's largest repository of knowledge as a multimedia encyclopedia and insisted that the bounty be shared with everyone. After many accolades and homages, another side of the man was presented by one of his granddaughters, Julia Boorstin. Her grandfather, she said, was an avid horseback rider with a romantic view of nature. She remembered taking a trip through Costa Rica in a family-packed van. Boorstin pointed out monkeys here and poisonous frogs there and gave impromptu lectures on evolution. And he loved to play games with the family. The one game that Boorstin was not a champion in, however, was charades. The usually loquacious librarian found it difficult, she said, because it was hard for him to not speak. 4:28:51 PM    comment []

NY Times: Pssst, Computer Users . . . Want Some Candy? As a species, humans tend to be very good at risk evaluation. We avoid a certain street because it looks and feels dangerous. A car moving too fast causes a fear that is felt as much as it is thought. But technology - or, more to the point, the general lack of knowledge about the most basic workings of a computer network - obscures that ability. [Tomalak's Realm] 3:44:07 PM    comment []

What the heck happened to the story on Wagner James Au's Second Life newspaper? It got seriously munched, and now I haven't got the reference with me to fix it. Farda, I guess. 3:34:47 PM    comment []

Mercury News. Wagner James Au thinks of himself as an editor and publisher of a small newspaper in a company town. But the odd thing is that he writes about a community that exists only in cyberspace. Au calls himself an "embedded journalist" in an online world dubbed "Second Life," where thousands of subscribers gather to build virtual homes, design their own 3-D characters, and socialize with friends they've never met in real life. . . . "Second Life" and other online communities have become such lifelike parallel worlds that they have journalists to cover them. Linden Lab hired Au to write a Weblog http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/ that chronicles the weirdness and drama of "Second Life." He interviews people by instant messages and witnesses their lives by logging into the world and watching on his computer screen. In his first life, (i.e., reality), Au is a 36-year-old freelance journalist who lives in Oakland, writing stories for Salon.com and Wired. But in "Second Life," he's the character Hamlet Linden. He fashioned this "avatar," a 3-D animated persona, to look like himself -- with long hair, a goatee and mustache. The avatar wears a white suit in tribute to author Tom Wolfe. When Hamlet Linden feels like making his own news, he plays a character that resembles muckraking journalist Hunter S. Thompson, armed with a bottle of whiskey and a gun. I've found amazing variety in the world, says Au. It's like a creative agora from ancient Greece. Virtual journalism is gathering steam as players feel a need to keep up with their fast-moving virtual lifestyles. Another virtual world, ``There,'' has a newspaper called the Caldera Sun-Times, written by New Orleans resident Christopher Snizik, who runs a home maintenance business in real life. The ``Sims Online'' has a newspaper called the Alphaville Herald. Ahem. 12:27:20 PM    comment []

Joe Cruz. ...a philosophy professor at Williams has a blog. It looks like it's early days on it, but there's already a very active discussion board. (I think I went twelve months before I had that many comments!) It also looks like it's powered by a university-wide blogging system, which is a very nice thing thing for a university to setup. [Thoughts Arguments and Rants] A very nice thing for a univesity to set up, indeed. As we draw nigh on the Launch of the Portal, maybe I'll advocate let 1000 weblogs bloom again. 7:10:58 AM    comment []

I heard about this at CFP last week: Pizza delivery calls used to nab deadbeats [T]he state of Missouri is using pizza delivery lists to track down people that owe court-imposed fines. David Coplen, the state office's budget director, said he discovered that pizza delivery lists are one of the best sources such companies use to locate people. "There are literally millions of dollars of uncollected fines, fees and court costs out there," Coplen said. [...] Databases compiled by private companies and government agencies are a key tool for firms such as ACS, Coplen said, and "one of the databases they find to be most helpful are pizza delivery databases." "When you call to order a pizza, you usually give them your correct name, your correct address and your correct phone number," he said. . . . . Link (Via IP) (thanks, Mark!) Not just MO, as I understand things, but this is pretty common in skip tracing nowadays. 7:07:17 AM    comment []

World Censorship Research. "The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it" ... "But what if censorship is in the router?" [Infothought] 7:00:37 AM    comment []

Innovative Boston-Area Buildings at a Green Standard. Many new projects in the Boston area are designed, engineered and built to efficiently use energy and natural resources. By Susan Diesenhouse. [New York Times: Business] 7:00:36 AM    comment []