Books
Worldstreams interview December 16, 2008
Last week I spent about an hour chatting with Said Leghlid at Worldstreams Radio in a free-ranging conversation about assorted topics in my book, punctuated by a few decidedly curveball questions from listeners. In the space of about 10 minutes,...
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Designing Universal Knowledge November 16, 2008
A few months ago, Amsterdam-based information designer Gerlinde Schuller approached me about writing an essay for a book about so-called universal knowledge systems. The result is "http://www.theworldasflatland.net/report1.htm">The World as Flatland: Designing Universal Knowledge, an unusual compendium that ranges across...
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Stefan Sagmeister February 21, 2008
Designer Stefan Sagmeister just gave a brown-bag talk to the NYTimes design team about his long-running Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far project, a series of homespun nuggets of wisdom rendered as eye-catching design installations. The just-launched...
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New Otlet biography September 18, 2006
Françoise Levie has just published a new biography of Paul Otlet entitled L'homme qui voulait classer le monde ("The Man who Wanted to Classify the World"). A few years ago, Levie was nice enough to give me permission to reproduce...
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The Twilight of American Culture July 29, 2006
I recently picked up a copy of Morris Berman's The Twilight of American Culture (recently reissued in a new 2006 edition), a sobering portrait of a country on the brink of economic, cultural and spiritual implosion. Berman argues that...
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The B�n Canon July 20, 2006
While I was staying at Serenity Ridge last month, I became intrigued by one of its prized possessions, the B�n Canon. The Canon very neraly failed to survive the Chinese invasion of Tibet. As the Chinese razed monasteries across the...
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Little Green June 15, 2006
While I was staying in New York last week, I took a tour of the Rubin Museum, where I met Chun Yu, a Chinese poet (and sometime biochemist) whose first book, Little Green, recounts her experiences growing up during the...
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John Wilkins Revisited May 24, 2006
Matt Webb has done some useful sleuthing into John Wilkins, long since fated to go down as the butt of Borges' famous joke. I've been doing some research into Wilkins as well (for the book I've been writing), and have...
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Crooked Cucumber April 27, 2006
I just finished reading David Chadwick's Crooked Cucumber, a biography of the late Zen teacher and San Francisco Zen Center founder Shunryu Suzuki. As one of the countless people who first connected with Buddhism through Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I...
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Return of the Subjective April 6, 2006
I was disappointed to miss Kevin Kelly's talk at the Long Now Foundation last month, but edge.org has posted a recap. Kelly talks about his book-in-progress on the future of technology, discussing a series of projections about macro trends in...
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A Million Little Snippets March 9, 2006
Newly elected Authors Guild President Roy Blount Jr, on taking up the gauntlet against Google Book Search: “Nick told me to just fix the Google thing and the rest would be easy,” said Mr. Blount. “Sounds like a job for...
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Rereading the Renaissance February 23, 2006
My long-ago cohorts at Harvard Magazine have published an interesting think piece by Adam Kirsch on I Tatti Renaissance Library, an ambitious effort to resurrect the faded reputations of a few humanist authors from the Renaissance: If Petrarch, Pius, Alberti,...
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Amish Technophilia February 9, 2006
I just noticed Kevin Kelly has picked up blogging his book-in-progress again after an extended hiatus. Here he pens an interesting contrarian take on the Amish, whom he sees not as Luddites, but rather as technologists with an agenda: The...
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The Rock Star's Burden December 15, 2005
In this NYTimes Op-Ed, a Grinchy Paul Theroux makes the case against giving money to western aid organizations in Africa, echoing a few themes from his book Dark Star Safari: Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps...
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The Post-Corporate World December 3, 2005
While I was up in Massachusetts a few weeks ago, I borrowed someone's copy of David Korten's The Post-Corporate World, a fascinating if bleak look at the future of capitalism. Korten, a former Harvard Business School professor, makes a convincing...
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Neo-bohemian rhapsody November 17, 2005
My cousin-in-law Andrew O'Hehir has written a fascinating take on Richard Lloyd's new book Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, a piercing critique of the popular mythology surrounding American urban bohemias like the Mission, Greenwich Village, and Chicago's...
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Cataloging the venerable Jorge May 17, 2005
The Crimson Hexagon is an annotated bibliography of all the fictional book titles that crop up in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Appropriately, author Allen B. Ruchs has added his own made-up annotations to this exercise in fictional...
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Oxyrhynchus Papyri April 19, 2005
In the last few days, researchers have started unearthing the secrets of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a treasure trove of lost classical texts: Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have...
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Dark Star Safari June 3, 2004
Ever since I read The Great Railway Bazaar some twenty-five years ago (at age 12), I've been a fan of Paul Theroux's sharp eye, careful prose, and unfailingly snarky disposition. Dark Star Safari finds Theroux at the peak of...
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The Bush files February 9, 2004
"Transparency" is the central theme in The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind's account of Paul O'Neill's troubled tenure in the Bush White House. During his decades in Washington government (and later as chairman of Alcoa) O'Neill had formed a conviction...
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Notes on Shlain January 29, 2004
A few raw notes from Leonard Shlain's talk at the SFPL last night: In the Alphabet vs. the Goddess, Shlain posited a startling theory about the effects of alphabetic literacy on the human brain, suggesting that the advent of the...
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Shlain on Sex, Time & Power January 28, 2004
Looking forward to seeing Leonard Shlain at the San Francisco Public Library tonight, reading from his new book Sex, Time & Power. I haven't read yet, but much admired his previous book The Alphabet vs. the Goddess (reviewed here). bonus...
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The price of loyalty January 13, 2004
My old teacher and former editor Ron Suskind is making all kinds of waves this week with his new book The Price of Loyalty, a damning account of life inside the Bush White House, fueled largely by interviews and...
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How the Irish Saved Civilization December 24, 2003
With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Europe lost more than just its imperial government; it also lost thousands of manuscripts - Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil - the intellectual foundation of the Pax Romana. In How...
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The Botany of Desire September 5, 2003
A fast-dash airport bookstore purchase en route home to Richmond this weekend yielded a copy of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire. Pollan, an environmental writer and frequent contributor to the New York Times magazine, has constructed a dark and slightly...
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gurners, grimaciers, and giant children January 1, 2003
just a few of the curiosities that populate jay's journal of anomalies, the new ricky jay book chronicling the history of pre-20th century sideshow conjurers and performers. a gift from jennifer's dad, it's turning out to be perfect light-headed reading...
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not for the faint of heart December 30, 2002
ayn rand's introduction to objectivist epistemiology....
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ye olde blogge December 26, 2002
pepys' diary, born again as a daily blog for 2003, thanks to project gutenberg and a dedicated fellow named phil gyford (via blackbeltjones)....
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of libraries, labyrinths and black-turtleneck semiotics July 13, 2002
Over the past few months, I've been surprised to find myself turning into a regular at the San Francisco Public Library (whose design, unlike Nicholson Baker, I actually quite admire). Today I wandered by to discover they're hosting a new...
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more literate SF-bashing May 27, 2002
this time from Lewis Lapham (now editor of Harpers) in 1979: I left California because I didn't have the moral fortitude to contend with the polymorphousness of the place. It was too easy to lose myself behind a mask, and...
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nothing to see in san francisco May 26, 2002
In 1875, Victorian lit-crit fixture Anthony Trollope writes on visiting San Francisco for the first time: After first bemoaning the young city's architectural shortcomings - "There is almost nothing to see in San Francisco that is worth seeing" - Trollope...
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lou's last word April 11, 2002
the latest IBM annual report reads, predictably, like a breathless encomium to Lou Gerstner. but aside from the inevitable lurches towards revisionist history (news alert: the mainframe market isn't quite dead ... yet), this is actually a pretty eloquent piece...
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via kottke, Salon is running December 25, 2001
via kottke, Salon is running an interview with Steven Johnson discussing his recent book on self-organizing systems. there's an interesting spin on the relevance of his book to the post-Sept 11 world, in that we have all witnessed two quintessential...
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"the semiotics of drinking" via August 14, 2001
"the semiotics of drinking" via peterme, the University of Chicago magazine takes a retrospective look at Social Research, Inc., the pioneering Chicago research group that pioneered the use of ethnographic and anthropological methods in market research. among their lasting contributions:...
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GLUT:
Mastering Information Through the Ages
New Paperback Edition
“A penetrating and highly entertaining meditation on the information age and its historical roots.”
—Los Angeles Times
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