Monthly Archives: August 2007

Technorealism

By Michael Becker | Published: August 28, 2007
Just fin­ished read­ing through David Shenk’s The End of Patience (1999) and hap­pened across a term near the end of the book that I wasn’t famil­iar with: tech­no­re­al­ism. Expect more on this con­cept soon. It has fas­ci­nated me.
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Junk Sleep

By Michael Becker | Published: August 28, 2007
Reuters reported today on a London sur­vey that says teens do not get enough sleep because they are dis­tracted by high-tech gad­gets in their bedrooms. The Sleep Council polled 1,000 teens aged 12 to 16 and found, on aver­age, they get from four to seven hours of sleep a night, less than rec­om­mended; and most [...]
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Philosophical Babble

By Michael Becker | Published: August 26, 2007
Dan Visel wrote yes­ter­day on the if:book blog about tabs and nonlinearity. The “tab” con­nec­tion — think­ing of tab in all of its mod­ern def­i­n­i­tions, from key­board­ing to phys­i­cal bits of things stick­ing out — had lit­tle to do with his over­all argu­ment, other than act­ing as a point of inspi­ra­tion and then an awk­ward [...]
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Oooh, That Smell

By Michael Becker | Published: August 23, 2007
An e-bookseller has taken the advice of a poll of col­lege stu­dents and begun issu­ing “old book smell” scratch and sniff stick­ers with their online sales. Reuters reports that a poll of 600 col­lege stu­dents shows that one of the qual­i­ties they most enjoy about their phys­i­cal books is the smell, whether old and musty [...]
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New Toy

By Michael Becker | Published: August 23, 2007
I got a new toy today, one of the brand new Apple slim key­boards. Why? Well, have you seen one? They, not that Timberlake snot, brought sexy back, with a vengeance. I don’t even have an Apple desk­top to use it with. (It’ll be plugged into my MacBookPro.) But I had to. I just had to. [...]
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