Woke up in the mood for listening to medieval/renaissance music. So I tuned in to the above online stream. Excellent. Click on the pic to go to the web site.
I skipped blogging yesterday. I spent my blogging time chatting with my brother who has been attending a conference on religious (Christian) writing.
Interesting to hear second hand descriptions (from my brother) about the fears and misconceptions book people have about the book, literacy and the internet.
It reminds me of intellectual property discussions I have listened in on.
I did find some interesting stuff online yesterday. As usual.
“Five Ways to Marinate Vegetables” [link] links to five interesting recipes, some of which I plan to try.
And this cool diagram:
Book dealers who are convinced that readers need “filters” at a time when readers can access tons of interconnected recommendations about books strike me as a bit out of step. I find myself less and less drawn to the browsing in a bookstore because of my ability to find almost anything I can imagine online.
Old timey distributors seem to fail to see the possibilities of the situation as they also seem to fail to see the blindness caused by their own panic and narrow self interest.
Anyway, I’m just getting it second hand from my brother.
Howard Gardner& Howard Rheingold have helped me understand a lot about how I approach reading and the web. A good quick overview can be found in this article: “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading” by Howard Gardner, Washington Post Feb 17, 2008 [link].
I sometimes confuse thinkers Howard Gardner and Howard Rheingold. Rheingold talks about attention literacy. Here’s a [link] to a quick article Rheingold has up on the Edge, “Attention is the fundamental literacy.” I couldn’t find the one where he talks about working with his daughter and the internet.
I had an interesting time yesterday returning to the site of the last Catholic church I worked for and playing a 50th wedding anniversary Mass. Very interesting to try to work with people with whom one does not share a common language (besides Music, heh). I accompanied a 14 or 15 voice choir. Played the mass.
I saw people from my past. It’s an odd feeling. Also we’re all a bit older, from the people who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary to the young man who used to be a toddler who snickered at my song, “Naked Boy” while his mom and I played and sang it.
Life is good.
And odd.
An interesting discussion about information and knowledge. Book store owners should be concerned, but not worried. The delivery of information is changing. They will need to adapt. The real problem, I think is about the amount of information and the decision as to what information is relevant or as I like to call it, “make knowledge” or the conversion of information into knowledge. I read Reingold’s article and it is essentially, my contention that the reader must be able to discern “what is important” in the information provided. I forwarded the article along to Dr. Parkins by Howard Gardner. It relates very well to his theory of “verbal laizez-faire”. The AMOUNT of information is of real concern, however. People are being swamped with information. Slugging through this to discover facts and ultimately truth is a problem. This is especially, true with politics.
I forgot to mention. I am listening to your medieval renaissance website. I am enjoying it immensely and have bookmarked it. Thanks so much.