Archive Fever: Writing and thinking with oceans, memory, and attention.

The moniker "post-literacy" does not mean or refer to a state or context after literacy. It does, however, rely on the supposition that individuals and groups (maybe even society) have "worked through" literacy...that literacy has been iterated into something else . This is not to say that literacy has been mastered or achieved its ultimate possibilities. Literacy has merely morphed or matriculated along trajectories to a point that it no longer resembles a dominant historical definition (such as the one that curriculum insists upon). Some aspects of symbolic interactionism touch on this in valuable ways.

Google and other social search engines don't retrieve everything. Actually, according to this piece, they retrieve a small percentage. Worth a cruise through. Check it out: http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/library/invisibleweb/characteristics.htm

In a Feb. 15 article , New York Times reporter Motoko Rich profiles librarians who lead students through critical navigation of the staggering amount of information available on the Internet. The New York Times piece explores the roles librarians play in helping students develop information literacy. Check video HERE.

Marc Bousque t's recent book "How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation" is a must read for anyone involved in higher education, either as student, faculty, or staff. It is an appropriate indictment (especially of the humanities) of the enterprise that is higher education. I am particularly glad that Bousquet has called out English departments for the bogus goods they sell to graduate students and for the extremely unethical way they treat non-tenure stream faculty (i.e., the folks who teach most of the sections in English departments but who are paid the least). There are many reasons the humanities are on the ropes, Bousquet highlights the primary drivers. Highly recommended (as are his YouTube videos). Linked here.

Somehow, not seeing the whole paradigm that Napster portended still haunts me. I stumbled (back) upon this after hearing a Grateful Dead iteration from years ago. Obviously, the genealogy of this song is something that precious Metallica didn't get. Now, more than ever, the Beavis and Butthead nod to these morons seems appropriate. At least read the Wikipedia entry on "Whiskey in the Jar".

Redux, redux, read all about it. ..AP continues to be on the wrong side of fair use/copyright (TechCrunch piece here) and insists on absurdly caricaturing itself, again (that's kinda sorta what redux means...hee hee). Read more here .

This clip has been circulated on quite a few blogs since TechCrunch commented on it a few days ago. It is indeed pretty interesting. The prescient quote below characterizes the video. "Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.”

I am always looking for progressively appropriate definitions of literacy. I recently read Howard Rheingold's chapter from J oi Ito's fabulous new release, Freesouls . HR's chapter is entitled Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies and, per usual, is helpful in formulating the impact and possibility of how "people do complicated things together". Rheingold's notion of literacy is foundational and seems better than a lot of what I've read from careerist academics; it's an encompassing and intelligent conceptualization that covers what society has done, is doing, and can do with technology when collaborating and communicating. Rheingold writes that literacy is: the set of skills that enable individuals to encode and decode knowledge and power via speech, writing, printing and collective action, and which, when learned, introduce the individual to a community. Literacy links technology and sociality . Rheingold continues: If the hum...

Embedded video from CNN Video In an effort to amplify its reinscription of the tired patriarchal status quo, Facebook has banned photos of breastfeeding. I continue to be amazed at the idiocy, sheer heavyhandness, and lack of social thought that goes on with this "social" app. The postmodern dinosaur metaphor still holds for these guys.

There's a recent article in the Raleigh News and Observer detailing what I perceive to be a nationwide occurrence. That occurrence is the new-found/renewed patronage of public libraries amidst near double digit unemployment and worsening economic conditions. Unfortunately, as the N&O article describes, libraries are handling this massive uptick in patrons at the same time funding is being cut and hiring frozen. Sure am glad the bailouts are working, I mean pessimism of the intellect with optimism of the will. Click here to read the N&O piece.

I am a fan of Slavoj Zizek and a fan of Powell's Books, so this video is a must view for me. Strongly recommended for a thinking through of how ideology functions and discursive consensus gets maintained. My good pal Aaron alerted me to this clip...he's a philosopher king in his own right. Enjoy.

My de - friending , Whopper-eating heyday has abruptly come to an end (and sadly too many old high school friends retain access to my profile). In a Big Brother type maneuver to protect us from ourselves, the hegemon at Facebook 86ed the Whopper Sacrifice App citing privacy issues. An article on InsideFacebook .com tells all. Arrington and the TechCrunch crew also comme nt . My two second take is that Facebook , already fatally flawed, continues to believe that that through its product/interface it can manipulate behavior on a complete structural level. Even if this were true, users (i.e., individuals and groups) will continue in a very deCerteau - ian way to author their own spaces vis -a- vis tactics to FB's strategy . Facebook---trite, boring, and Whopperless--lumbers along (postmodern dinosaur it is) right behind its benefactor in Redmond. Triglycerides in decline, I curse thee.

There's a new Facebook app that will reward folks for de-friending individuals from their friend list. The reward, you ask...a Burger King Whopper. You can read the CNET story here . Even though I haven't patronized the BK Lounge in years, this could prompt me to solve a couple of problems. Over the past few weeks it seems that my entire graduating class from high school has operationalized Facebook as a mechanism to "reconnect" with long lost "friends". Somehow I have gotten roped into this parade of broken dreams...oops, I mean virtual class reunion that won't end. It is really trashing my Facebook experience. At night, in the tiny hours, I often wake wondering why those in the humanities are paid so poorly and now I am also wondering how I am going to get out of this predicament with all my new old high school pals that I some how lost track of. Whoppers may be the answer...there seem to be several in my future.

I've been checking out the potential names for Powell's Books' squirrel. Pretty good suggestions. The original post (with background story) and potential names is here . It's a nice departure from holiday wackiness.

A lot of my projects at hand are focused on information literacy , and have consequently brought me to a lot of Library 2.0 resources. Here's one that I think is particularly useful. It is a wiki intended to "provide information about some of the new web-based tools (Web 2.0) and how they can be used and are being used by school library media specialists and their students and teachers." I think it is really useful. The link is above and HERE too.

The Boston Globe published a piece this week that profiled a study whose findings assert that "the boom in online research may actually have a "narrowing" effect on scholarship". The article can be accessed here. This seems like a pretty broad claim and, from my reading of the article, the study does not necessarily differentiate between research practices, expectation, and trends within different disciplines. One central point in the article was that serendipity had been extricated from the research process. Granted, I'm partial given my ties to an Information and Library Science School, but I do also teach in an English Department. One of the benefits, or curses, of my status as disciplinary interloper is that I'm on varied listservs. A recent post on one of my "English" listservs was the following: Libraries are also making serendipity difficult. They do this with online catalogues which make the casual viewing of records more difficult....

This Daily Show piece reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke 's three "laws" of prediction (namely #3): When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Magic indeed...check it out.

Google Reader now translates most any blog in most any language. Here's a story on TechCrunch about it. Critics are remarking that the translation is pretty tight...folks are impressed. I'm struck by this and what implications it will have for notions and practices of literacy. It's early on in the game, but without necessity what will be the motivation and utility of mastery of non-native languages? Obviously, I am not going to argue that such projects and literacies will become non-essential and a mere boutique fancy. However, with any technological advancement like this, the notion of what makes one "literate" (technically and philosophically) does shift a bit. One recent parallel might be that of GPS usage and literacy compared to old school expertise in cartography (of course GOOG is a key player here too). An argument could be made that such impressive technological developments and dissemination actually encourage literacy, albeit not literacy as it...

This video has been around for awhile, but it's still worth a (re)view. Richard Miller's imagining of the "New Humanities" hinges on the commitment that the real function of the humanities is to foster incisive creativity across disciplinary space...creativity that addresses the textures (and textualities) of our everyday life. Too many times humanities departments fail to do this and, in my opinion, ensure their accelerated path toward irrelevance. I like his exposition particularly because he insists on disciplinary heteroglosia shot through multimedia composition. Creative social practices anyone?

Library usage is on the rise...check out this KIRO 7 video at Seattle Public Library.