Author: caropinto

#Reading

>In 1971, CJR wrote of the promises of cable television: “One can bring to every home two-way, broad-band communications that can provide a whole galaxy of new services,” including “facsimile reproductions” of newspapers and magazines, and “access to information banks at libraries, medical centers, ect.” (Emphasis added.) Remember, this was before the Internet as it exists now was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. What we might call “content” today was still “information.”

-Language Corner, Merrill Perlman, *Columbia Journalism Review,* Nov/Dec 2011

So it snowed in Western Mass over the weekend

It’s been a whirlwind few days, internetz. I travelled to Columbia for a DH field trip on Friday and returned to Northampton on Friday and then prepared for the storm on Saturday morning. By Saturday night, I lost power that wasn’t restored until Monday. I still don’t have heat or hot water. Thanks to the generosity of friends, I been able to shower and enjoy a hot meal.

Hampshire is still closed, so I am working at my favorite coffee hub in Northampton to work on my email backlog and assess my calendar for the next few days and juggle appointments.

I feel like a kid on an extended snow holiday, gleeful for free off days, but anxious about a lost routine. I am grateful to be safe and (mostly) warm.

#Reading

"In this I join two friends and colleagues who’ve made related calls. Siva Vaidhyanathan has coined the phrase “Critical Information Studies” to describe an emerging “transfield” concerned with (among other things) “the rights and abilities of users (or consumers or citizens) to alter the means and techniques through which cultural texts and information are rendered, displayed, and distributed.”  Similarly, Eszter Hargittai has pointed to the inadequacy of the notion of the “digital divide” and has suggested that people instead talk about the uneven distribution of competencies in digital environments.”

via The Late Age of Print 

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